In a nutshell

Webpage Building

I wrote two posts last Friday at work but I haven’t been able to post them yet. Until very recently, I have been able to makes posts and edit my website at my school computer. However, that recently stopped. Now, I am unable to type in the dialogue box where I would post my latest phrase of the day. I don’t understand why this is the case because I can still do everything else related to the post. I can make tags, titles, add SEO information, and the featured image. So, I thought, I could just do it at home. But, of course, I keep forgetting when I am at home. The reason why this is an issue is because I wait to make the webpage before posting to Facebook. That way, I can add the webpage link for anyone that wants to learn more. The webpage is always the best presentation of my ideas. There are extra pictures and videos that help understand the content. Now, it is Tuesday and still haven’t posted these phrases. In a nutshell, I haven’t posted anything because of internet problems.

 

 

Meaning

In a nutshell is a summary of what has been said. You can also avoid telling a long, detailed story by using in a nutshell to give the listener the main points. Yet another definition I came across is to give information in the fewest possible words.

Example: In a nutshell, the movie was boring.  

 

 

Origin

In a nutshell is much older than the English language. It dates to 77AD. Pliny the Elder wrote, “Cicero hath recorded, that the poem of Homer called the Iliad, written on parchment, was enclosed within a nutshell.” He is saying that Cicero was able to fit the Iliad inside the shell of a nut because he wrote so small. This is an amazing feat considering that the Iliad is about 700 pages of A4 text. Pliny the Elder may have been a victim of poor information or was being hyperbolic.

Pliny the Elder’s work, Natural History, was translated into middle-English in the 14^th century. Over time, the phrase was expanded to include spoken words as well as written ones. It also adopted its idiomatic meaning, to give information concisely. The first mention of this came from Stephen Gosson in The Schoole of Abuse (1579).  By the 1800s, in a nutshell was a common idiomatic expression. Wordhistories dates the idiomatic phrase to The Morning Post in 1803: “The historical part of the plot everyone knows. It lays in a nutshell.” It also appears in The Second Funeral of Napoleon (1841) by William Thackery: “here, then, in a nutshell, you have the whole matter.” By this time, in a nutshell has clearly adopted its modern meaning.

 

 

The Smallest Bible

Nowadays, the Christian Bible is the long book that we have tried to fit in a nutshell. A few decades ago, a version of the bible was printed on a 35mm slide. It was the smallest bible at the time, but you needed a microscope to read it. As time went on, technology improved. In 2012, a version of the bible was produced using nanotechnology. It is 0.04 mm².

 

 

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Resources:

https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-a-nutshell/
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/in--a--nutshell
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/in-a-nutshell.html
https://bibletruthpublishers.com/kjv-micro-bible-the-smallest-bible-in-the-world-microfilm/king-james-version/pd6365
https://www.jpost.com/christian-news/worlds-tiniest-bible-to-be-presented-at-israel-museum-for-50th-anniversary-398546
https://wordhistories.net/2017/06/26/in-a-nutshell-origin/