Why “Nuts” and “Bananas” Came to Mean “Crazy”

Ever wonder how perfectly normal words like nuts and bananas ended up meaning “crazy”? English slang evolves in weird, unpredictable ways — nobody announces new meanings, they just show up in everyday speech and eventually stick. Here’s how these two fruity favorites wandered into the world of mental‑state metaphors.

How “Nuts” Became Synonymous With “Crazy”

The word nut has been around since early Old English — we’re talking roughly the 9th century. Over time, it picked up a bunch of extra meanings:

the metal fastener
the tricky question (“a hard nut to crack”)
the part of a musical instrument’s neck
slang for “head”

By the late 1700s, British slang included the phrase “nuts on” to mean someone was enthusiastically obsessed with something — basically the old‑school version of “crazy about.” Around the same time, people were already using “mad for” and “crazy for” in the same sense.

Then, by the mid‑1800s, nut was also slang for “head,” and “off one’s nut” meant mentally unhinged. With all these overlapping uses floating around, it’s no surprise that “nuts” meaning “crazy” shows up in print by 1846.

How “Bananas” Entered the Slang Game

Compared to nuts, bananas is a late arrival. The earliest solid evidence comes from the 1960s, when college students were using “bananas” to mean excited, wild, or unbalanced.

One theory: During that era, a popular myth claimed you could get high by smoking banana peels. (Spoiler: you can’t.) But the association between bananas and altered mental states may have helped the slang catch on.

There are a couple of earlier banana‑related expressions that might connect:

“Banana oil” (1920s): slang for nonsense
“He’s bananas” (1935 criminal slang): meaning sexually deviant — reflecting outdated beliefs that certain sexualities were “insane”

These aren’t direct ancestors, but they show the word drifting toward “irrational” or “off‑kilter.”

A Side Note: Fruit as Slang

If you’re familiar with older slang, you might remember “fruit” being used as a derogatory term for gay men in the mid‑20th century. It likely started in U.S. prison slang and later entered British gay subculture through Polari, a coded language used before homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK.

Polari loved food metaphors — “seafood” for sailors, “meat and two veg” for obvious reasons — so fruit fit right in. Over time, the term was used both as an insult and reclaimed humorously within the community.

The history includes some dark chapters, like Canada’s infamous “fruit machine” — a pseudo‑scientific device used to identify and fire gay government employees. But it also includes moments of resistance, like the 1970s slogan “Squeeze a fruit for Anita,” aimed at anti‑gay activist Anita Bryant.

Bottom Line

Words like nuts and bananas didn’t suddenly become slang for “crazy” because someone decided they should. They evolved through decades of playful, metaphorical, and sometimes problematic usage. English is a living language — and sometimes it goes a little… well… bananas.

Source: How did “nuts” and “bananas” come to mean “crazy”? – The Straight Dope