Why people say fruit and nuts are crazy?

Question

what is the association between fruit or nut being "crazy" like when they describe people "nutty as a fruit cake or something"....I mean, I have never seen a banana go crazy on someone

Answer 1

well you should watch bananas a little more closely i think

Answer 2

A banana killed my dog.

Answer 3

Fruitcake used to be made with nuts and candied fruit and was soaked in alcohol for weeks and weeks. Well, that would make anybody act funny.

And there used to be a rhyme that said,

"You were a little nut, hanging on a tree.

Somebody pulled you off and stepped on thee.

You're Cracked!"

"Nut" is slang for "head" so if you're a cracked nut, you're crazy.

Answer 4

Have you ever watched the Monty Python sketch were the police trainer has the trainees attack him with a banana?

This one has no earthly idea as to why such is employed as it is yet, for as long as this one has resided in Western nations, especially the USofA, this one has heard that expression.

This one will check back later to see the many and possible answers.

thank you for this post.

Be well.

Answer 5

Ever open p a nut or fruit to find brain matter in them?  Yet, if someone use those expression, what is actually meant is that people are behaving without brain -- hence without thinking, like fruits or nuts  The connection is kind of a stretch, and cryptic thus requires thinking to get to.

Also there was a reference in WWII when a German official was asking an American official to surrender his command over the radio to which the reply was: "Nuts" which perplexed the German  -- as an indication that the German official was crazy and brainless.

Answer 6

I suspect the association traces back to vaudeville or earlier.

An old saying is "a tough nut to crack" - black walnuts are tasty, nothing like the English variety, but pure h**l to crack and dig out the "meat" or value.  Perhaps the analogy ran that the unpersuadable one-track-mind variety of craziness resembled the nuts (like black walnuts or Brazils) that are impossible to persuade or break open.

The allusion to fruit and insanity is inexact:  it is actually a putdown term for homosexuals, then equating same-gender sexual orientation with insanity.

My stepdad was a retired Army Master Sgt. who called California "The Land of Fruits and Nuts:  if you don't go fruits, you go nuts."  He knew that was a good way to get me flaming mad and off any other topic that he found uncomfortable.  Luckily, he married my mom 3 months before I graduated high school (rather than sooner).

No, you've never seen a banana go crazy on anyone.  But never ASSUME that we have all grown up to be adults and to respect each other.  (That does not require lockstep conformity.)  We have to protect civil rights and liberties for ALL of us, or we could end up in something like n**i Germany or Bush America.  Not the same, you say?  The laws on the books are starting to look pretty  strange, folks.  Just because they haven't all yet been enforced doesn't mean they aren't there.

Answer 7

Its about reaching to the core ( brain which designate mind). In order to communicate w/ him/her in ordinarily way U need to crack the outer layer ( takes time and effort). If he/she is very light, hasty etc then its a fruit cake a mix of opinions, unpredictable .

Answer 8

This is a guess, but it could date back to a time when people ate fewer fruits. People on the margins of society might have had to forage for anything including wild berries or nuts. Over time, those foods could have been identified with outsiders.