IN A NUTSHELL, phr. (colloquial).—In small compass. Condensed; ‘boiled down.’

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  1622.  FLETCHER, The Spanish Curate, ii. 1.

        All I have to lose, Diego, is my learning;
And, when he has gotten that, he may put it in a NUT-SHELL.

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  d. 1745.  SWIFT, A Tale of a Tub, vii. I have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a NUT-SHELL.

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  1866.  W. COLLINS, Armadale, iii. A nervous patient who is never worried is a nervous patient cured. There it is in a NUTSHELL.

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