1. The hard shell enclosing the seed of the walnut; also, either of the boat-shaped halves of this.
[c. 1384: see WALSH-NUT.]
1523–34. Fitzherb., Husb., § 93. There wyll ryse pymples as moche as halfe a walnutshell.
1596. Shaks., Tam. Shr., IV. iii. 66. Heere is the cap your Worship did bespeake … Why ’tis a cockle or a walnut-shell.
1647. Stapylton, Juvenal, 30. Spiders … at this day are worne in baggs or walnut-shells against a tertian ague.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes, ii. In the gale of last night the lifeboat had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell.
1885. Sir W. Harcourt, in S. Gwynn, Life Dilke (1917), II. 187. I therefore spoke like a cat in walnut shells.
† b. Applied to the outer husk of the walnut.
1552. Huloet, Walnut shele, gulioca.
1769. Ann. Reg., 128. They were a gang of gypsies … rubbing or dyeing a fine young girl, about seventeen, with walnut-shell.
c. In phrases implying extreme calmness of the sea. (Cf. 2.)
1791. Smeaton, Edystone L., 96. The sea breaks upon them [sc. the Edystone rocks] in a frightful manner … when, figuratively speaking, you might go to sea in a Walnut-shell.
2. transf. Applied to a boat, as a hyperbolical expression for extreme lightness and fragility, († In the 17th c. app. used as the actual name of some fragile kind of boat.)
1614. Gentleman, Eng. Way to Wealth, 27. The Fleet of Hollanders … that go in the Swoard-pinks,… Walnut-shels, and great and small Yeuers, 100. and 200. Saile at one time together.
1836. E. Howard, R. Reefer, xxxiv. Our little walnut-shell got on the top of one [wave].
1903. E. Childers, Riddle of Sands, xii. 125. Davies nursed our walnut-shell tenderly over their crests.
3. slang. A very light carriage.
1810. Sporting Mag., XXXVI. 232. Drawing a walnut-shell over a level road.
4. attrib.
1460–70. Bk. Quinte Essence, 20. Of þis watir ȝeue to þe pacient, morowe and euen, a walnot-schelle ful at oonys.
1793–4. [Aikin & Mrs. Barbauld], Even. at Home (1805), II. 36. The pond where I used to sail my walnut-shell boats.
