English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

nuts +‎ -o

Pronunciation edit

Adjective edit

nutso (comparative more nutso, superlative most nutso)

  1. (colloquial) Crazy, insane.
    • 2000, Zadie Smith, White Teeth, London: Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN:
      "You wanted a report, so here's a full report: crazy, nutso, raisins short of a fruitcake, rubber walls, screaming-mad basket-cases."
    • 2000, Robert Bacal, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing With Difficult Employees:
      "It's a bit scary if you have a difficult boss, and it's out-and-out frightening if you have a completely nutso, maladjusted, irrational, or disturbed boss."
    • 2005, G. R. Kirby, Sow the Storm:
      "I was wondering if you had any crazy nutso guy stalking you, or something."
  2. (colloquial) Fraught or out of control.
    • 2005, Phyllis Hollenbeck, Sacred Trust: The Ten Rules of Life, Death, and Medicine, →ISBN, page 40:
      How being taught to not cut corners, even in a nutso emergency room shift, meant I checked all regions in Mary below the waist and didn't just tell her I thought it was probably gas.
    • 2010, Alison Seay, Your Mom's a Vampire!, page 1:
      I put my hand to my chest—my heart was going nutso.
    • 2013, Tracy Moore, Oops! How to Rock the Mother of All Surprises, →ISBN, page 114:
      A nutso relationship is no joke, and no baby should be exposed to that.
    • 2013, Chuck Wendig, Unclean Spirits, →ISBN:
      In 1969, one of the wire spoolers goes nutso, breaks off its mooring, the wire lashing about like a horse's tail trying to chase away a fly.
  3. (colloquial) Obsessed; overly enthusiastic.
    • 2001, Kathryn North, Proud Mari, →ISBN, page 7:
      Even the most nutso fisherman would think twice about going out on the lake today.
    • 2002, Pamela Hayes, The Lie, →ISBN:
      I'm nutso about AnnRice, R.L. Stine, Dean Koontz.
    • 2011, Laird Foster, The Lux Proofs, →ISBN, page 287:
      My dad wants to send heirloom tomato seeds there. He's nutso about tomatoes.
    • 2013, Cindi Madsen, Falling For Her Fiance (Entangled Bliss), →ISBN:
      Don't get scared when Dani goes nutso over decorations— it's normal and then they change back.
  4. (colloquial) Ridiculous; unbelievable or silly.
    • 2000, Finola Moorhead, Darkness More Visible, →ISBN, page 133:
      Forget the mechanical, materlial, solid model of communication, bring in the invisible but very real web rings. Internet, hacking and so on; puerile conversations of chat pages, insane obsessions with nutso things.
    • 2008, Becky Garrison, The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail, →ISBN, page 55:
      Trust me, we both can find fringe fanatics to prove the other side is nutso. So let's stop with this stereotypical silliness.
    • 2009, Sally John, Gary Smalley, A Time to Surrender, →ISBN, page 30:
      This is a nutso project they've taken on, but it's their nutso project, not ours.
    • 2010, John O'Keefe, The Spread, →ISBN, page 253:
      She made us go through this nutso warrior ceremony.

Synonyms edit

Noun edit

nutso (countable and uncountable, plural nutsos)

  1. (colloquial, countable) A crazy person; a crackpot or lunatic.
    • 2001, John Sandford, Easy Prey, →ISBN:
      You know, some computer nerd rapist killer nutso builds a fantasy around her, crashes a party whereshe's supposed to be, she laughs himoff, says she'd rather be fuckin' her girlfriends than a pimply little freak--
    • 2012, A. J. Swoboda, Messy: God Likes It That Way, →ISBN, page 143:
      Sadly, at the end of his life, Luther became somewhat of a nutso.
    • 2014, David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, →ISBN, page 417:
      Why give even one minute to this head-meddling nutso?
  2. (colloquial, uncountable) Craziness; insanity.
    • 2012, Harlan Ellison, An Edge in My Voice, →ISBN:
      I wrote a letter to the Guild Newsletter apologizing for having disrupted the show, pleading temporary nutso.
    • 2014, S.P. Durnin, Keep Your Crowbar Handy, →ISBN:
      I knew she was a crazy bitch, but this is a whole new level of nutso.

Adverb edit

nutso (comparative more nutso, superlative most nutso)

  1. (colloquial) Madly; extremely or obsessively.
    • 2012, Susan Donovan, He Loves Lucy, →ISBN:
      I'm completely, utterly, nutso in love with that man!
  2. (colloquial) In a crazy manner.
    • 2006, Michael Amore, Loosely Based On Last Thursday, →ISBN, page 102:
      I'm working at the ink-jet machine running a job...then I hear a weird noise I but I can't really tell what it is over the sound of the machine right.. .then I think I hear a whimper...all of a sudden my step mom bursts out from her office all nutso saying..."where is your father, where is your father"
    • 2014, Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett, The Long Mars, →ISBN:
      In there was Captain Ed Cutler, whom every man and woman in Maggie's old command had once seen run nutso in Valhalla.

Anagrams edit