In A Nutshell
"Help! I'm in a nutshell!" — Austin Powers already knew this phrase was funnier taken literally. We trace "in a nutshell" back almost 2,000 years to a claim that might just be one of history's oldest fake news stories.Mario and Twenty unveil the origin, confirm the meaning, and assess the value of "in a nutshell." The trail starts with a wild secondhand claim: Pliny the Elder wrote that Cicero once said the entire Iliad was copied onto parchment small enough to fit inside a nutshell...a claim scholars now treat as an ancient game of telephone more than a fact. From there it survives centuries…
The skinny
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