Cool Beans -- Speaking of Shakespeare... There's a scene in As you Like It, where the heroine (Rosilind) finds bad love poetry written in her honor hanging from the branches of trees. And the Jester (Touchstone) teases her with his own version, including these lines:

Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind

And I've always wondered: exactly how modern is our modern meaning of the word "nut" as a foolish, or mad, person? This wonderment woke up in my head the other day, and I've had the song "I'm a nut" floating in my head ever since...