taube Nüsse

10:52 Sep 13, 2016 

Thanks for enlightening me ... maybe I've read "deaf nuts" in a historic novel. Anyway, I'd like to point out that the German term is neither slang nor outdated. However, I agree that the first thing I think of when I hear it is a person, not a nut. Maybe the term will ultimately suffer the same fate as "geile Kartoffeln", which was a completely innocent and common term in my grandparents' generation. ;-)

10:24 Sep 13, 2016 

What can I say, I'm a history geek. You'll thank me next time you have to write about the nut harvest under King George III. - that is if they don't use the word to describe the king himself ( http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22122407 ).

In any case, I know how frustrating it is (as in Erik's case) to remember seeing or hearing a term, but not being able to recall where or when.

Enjoy your day!

09:53 Sep 13, 2016 

I simply don't know how you do it! I would never have the time or patience to travel back a century for a term sought in 2016. It's good to know there's soemone out there who cares.

09:48 Sep 13, 2016 

Didn't I tell Erik that the references were older than both of us?

Another case in point:
"5.Decayed; tasteless; dead; as, a deaf nut; deaf corn. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.]
--Halliwell.
[1913 Webster]
http://www.onlinedictionary.co.uk/reference/dictionary.jsp?q...

In short: It probably wouldn't be wrong in a 19th century novel; it just isn't feasible here.

09:44 Sep 13, 2016 

in US slang as it is in German. In fact, I have never heard it used at all in the way it is used in German. Nut head or nut brain, yes, referring to size and density :-). From a purely practical point of view, 'blank' is very common for nuts, ears of corn and grains without kernels.

09:37 Sep 13, 2016 

"Both in English and in German the idea 'deaf' is applied to 'a nut without a kernel,' — a deaf nut, eine taube Nuss. De Quincey (Autob. Sketches, I, p. 91) speaks of 'what children call a deaf nut, offering no kernel;' and Bishop Hall, in the seventeenth century, uses this phrase of 'a man that hath outward service without inward fear.' In English and German dialects, and sometimes in the literary forms of these tongues, the term 'deaf' is given to empty ears of corn, light grain, things that are hollow, empty, barren, unproductive, weak, insipid, etc., particularly land, eggs, etc. Murray's great English dictionary, Wright's English Dialect dictionary and Grimm's German dictionary contain a mass of evidence on these points."
https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1412229/1412229_djvu.txt

Old-fashioned, though, I suppose.

09:35 Sep 13, 2016 

"'not worth a deaf nut' but connotatively, 'not worth an empty nut' or a nut 'without a center' used in one or more epistemic/fideistic shell-games"
https://books.google.de/books?id=D2mMdJ6ssnMC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA...

"A deaf nut, is a nut whose kernel is decayed."
https://books.google.de/books?id=FTVAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA193&lpg=P...

20:18 Sep 12, 2016 

http://de.langenscheidt.com/deutsch-englisch/search?term=tau...
and
http://www.duden.de/suchen/englisch/taube Nuss