To be greatly frustrated. The word "nuts" is sometimes replaced by crazy, bonkers, bananas, insane, or up the wall.
People can become annoyed over things that are bothering them, and once their tolerance threshold has boiled over, an irritated person will often use the common idiom Driving Me Nuts to express their feelings of frustration.
My Thoughts
When you hear the word "nut", what's the first thing that comes to mind? You might be bombarded with images of peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and other dried fruits, but on the other hand, you might think about how the word "nut" can be used to describe someone. How so?
The term nut is most commonly attributed to someone for one of two reasons: it either means they are funny or crazy. For instance, you could say: "My friend here is a nut," which means he's a whimsical type of fellow. On the contrary, you could say: "That guy is acting nuts," meaning he's mentally deranged; he's insane.
We're not here to talk about how delicious nuts can be, because they certainly are, but let's instead focus on how this word became incorporated into a popular saying that refers to the mental state of a person.
Phrase Origins
According to the Word-Detective, in the mid-1800s, the word "nut" was slang to mean a person's head, and not long after that point did the term acquire the meaning of someone not being quite right in the head, which is how the word is used today.
In many instances, the last word in this expression,"nuts," is substituted with different words that effectively mean the same thing. Alterations of this phrase can be something like: "You're driving me bananas!" Or the more straightforward: "You're driving me crazy!"
In any case, whatever version of the idiom we choose to employ, it seems there will always be a way to express our annoyances with others.
Examples of the Saying Being Used in Sentences:
"I'm trying to study over here and all I can hear is your loud music. It's driving me nuts, can you turn the volume down?"
"I'm so nervous about that job interview I have tomorrow that I can't bring myself to fall asleep, and it's driving me nuts!
"Hannah's dogs were barking at the neighbors, and she was driven nuts when they refused to listen to her stern voice of disapproval."
Note: For most popular sayings and other common phrases you come across on this site, finding the precise phrase origin is difficult. What's provided is around the earliest known date the expression was being used in.
Usually the expression comes from a quote found in an old newspaper, book, poem, or play. However, if the idiomatic phrase is already being used in one of those, it's likely already a well known saying, thus it should be assumed the origins are older.
There are rare cases where determining an idiom's origin is possible. For the most part, you'll get an approximate age of a phrase and an idea on how the meaning of the saying changed, if at all, over the course of its history.
