Green’s Dictionary of Slang

crazy; pertaining to the insane.

1908		B. Fisher ‘A. Mutt’ [comic strip] Dr McGetthehook [...] disagrees with the other nut authorities.
1914		R. Lardner ‘Horseshoes’ in Coll. Short Stories (1941) 255: We was all crazy, believin’ his nut play had let ’em tie it up.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Intermittent Fusser’ in Ade’s Fables 59: He was on the waiting list for the Nut Club. Our Old Friend was flooey in the Filbert.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 19: You been pulling these nut conversations about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths.
1929		J. Lait Broadway Melody 9: ‘Novelty’ numbers (such as the banana and other eccentric inspirations, also known as ‘nut’ numbers).
1943		J. Mitchell McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (2001) 26: Where’d they put you this time — the drunk ward or the nut ward?
1954		M. Bodenheim My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village (1961) 120: These dens of iniquity are real ‘nut’ clubs, in the pathological sense of the word.
1959		J. Thompson Getaway in Four Novels (1983) 74: It was mostly nut stuff [...] the kind of hooroosh that always sprang up around a big name or a big kill.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 31: The nut kid comes to me I should bust him out of a jam. [Ibid.] 81: I said some real nut stuff.
1970		E. Tidyman Shaft 61: A nut spade he’d picked up in Times Square.
1978		W. Diehl Sharky’s Machine 128: This nut idea.
2009		(con. 1960s) J. Ellroy Blood’s a Rover 16: Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right. He did Klan ops for Mr Hoover.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 381: We were backlogged. Forty nut confessors [i.e. to a sex murder] clogged the hallways.