ˈwalnut-shell
1. The hard shell enclosing the seed of the walnut; also, either of the boat-shaped halves of this.
| [c 1384: see walsh-nut.] 1523–34 Fitzherb. Husb. §93 There wyll ryse pymples as moche as halfe a walnutshell. 1596 Shakes. Tam. Shr. iv. iii. 66 Heere is the cap your Worship did bespeake... Why 'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell. 1647 Stapylton Juvenal 30 Spiders..at this day are worne in baggs or walnut-shells against a tertian ague. 1842 Dickens Amer. Notes ii, In the gale of last night the life⁓boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell. 1885 Sir W. Harcourt in S. Gwynn Life Dilke (1917) II. 187, I therefore spoke like a cat in walnut shells. |
† b. Applied to the outer husk of the walnut.
| 1552 Huloet, Walnut shele, gulioca. 1769 Ann. Reg. 128 They were a gang of gypsies..rubbing or dyeing a fine young girl, about seventeen, with walnut-shell. |
c. In phrases implying extreme calmness of the sea. (Cf. 2.)
| 1791 Smeaton Edystone L. §6 The sea breaks upon them [sc. the Edystone rocks] in a frightful manner..when, figuratively speaking, you might go to sea in a Walnut-shell. |
2. transf. Applied to a boat, as a hyperbolical expression for extreme lightness and fragility. († In the 17th c. app. used as the actual name of some fragile kind of boat.)
| 1614 T. Gentleman Eng. Way to Wealth 27 The Fleet of Hollanders..that go in the Swoard-pinks,..Walnut-shels, and great and small Yeuers, 100. and 200. Saile at one time together. 1836 E. Howard R. Reefer xxxiv, Our little walnut-shell got on the top of one [wave]. 1903 E. Childers Riddle of Sands xii. 125 Davies nursed our walnut-shell tenderly over their crests. |
3. slang. A very light carriage.
| 1810 Sporting Mag. XXXVI. 232 Drawing a walnut-shell over a level road. |
4. attrib.
| 1460–70 Bk. Quinte Essence 20 Of þis watir ȝeue to þe pacient, morowe and euen, a walnot-schelle ful at oonys. 1793–4 [Aikin & Mrs. Barbauld] Even. at Home (1805) II. 36 The pond where I used to sail my walnut-shell boats. |