Chapter Nunc Stans to Nyse of N by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

The allusion is to an old Roman marriage ceremony, in which the bridegroom, as he led his bride home, scattered nuts to the crowd, as if to symbolise to them that he gave up his boyish sports.
   That's nuts to him. A great pleasure, a fine treat. Nuts, among the Romans, made a standing dish at dessert; they were also common toys for children; hence, to put away childish things is, in Latin, to put your nuts away.

Nut-brown Maid Henry, Lord Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland, and Lady Margaret Percy, his wife, are the originals of this ballad. Lord Clifford had a miserly father and ill-natured step-mother, so he left home and became the head of a band of robbers. The ballad was written in 1502, and says that the “Not- browne Mayd” was wooed and won by a knight who gave out that he was a banished man. After describing the hardships she would have to undergo if she married him, and finding her love true to the test, he revealed himself to be an earl's son, with large hereditary estates in Westmoreland. (Percy: Reliques, series ii.)

Nutcrack Night All Hallows' Eve, when it is customary in some places to crack nuts in large quantities.

Nutcrackers The 3rd Foot; so called because at Albuera they cracked the heads of the Polish Lancers, then opened and retreated, but in a few minutes came again into the field and did most excellent service. Now called “The East Kent.”

Nutshell The Iliad in a nutshell. Pliny tells us that Cicero asserts that the whole Iliad was written on a piece of parchment which might be put into a nutshell. Lalanne describes, in his Curiosités Bibliographiques, an edition of Rochefoucault's Maxims, published by Didot in 1829, on pages one inch square, each page containing 26 lines, and each line 44 letters. Charles Toppan, of New York, engraved on a plate one-eighth of an inch square 12,000 letters. The Iliad contains 501,930 letters, and would therefore occupy 42 such plates engraved on both sides. Huet has proved by experiment that a parchment 27 by 21 centimetres would contain the entire Iliad, and such a parchment would go into a common-sized nut; but Mr. Toppan's engraving would get the whole Iliad into half that size. George P. Marsh says, in his Lectures, he has seen the entire Arabic Koran in a parchment roll four inches wide and half an inch in diameter. (See Iliad. )
   To lie in a nutshell. To be explained in a few words; to be capable of easy solution.

Nym (Corporal). One of Falstaff's followers, and an arrant rogue. Nim is to steal. (Merry Wives of Windsor.)

Nyse (2 syl.). One of the Nereids (q.v.).

“The lovely Nysë and Neri'në spring,
With all the vehemence and speed of wing.”
Camoens: Lusiad, bk. ii.