# why food words for insanity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2000, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978 "2000-05-19T15:50:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gold1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gold1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gold1)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/1 "2000-05-19T15:50:19Z")
I know the reason may be the obvious, e.g., someone spotted someone else chowing down on say, bananas, and then acting all freaky, but where do these things come from??? Crackers, bananas, fruity, nutty, flaky, fruitloop, fruitcake, and there’s sure to be some I missed. Please someone help!! This has been making me crackers for years. ---
**Author:** ![funneefarmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@funneefarmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funneefarmer)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/2 "2000-05-19T17:50:27Z")
[A compendium of insults and “not all there” comments from various sources.](http://www.his.com/~tkuster/humor/fulldeck.htm) Not much help with your problem but gives you an idea of how many ways there is to say you’re an insane idiot. ---
**Author:** ![gold1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gold1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gold1)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/3 "2000-05-19T17:55:31Z")
Hey! come on people, I’m sure someone has an origin on one of these! ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/4 "2000-05-19T17:57:47Z")
Koo-Koo for Coco Puffs… ---
**Author:** ![lucyfur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e36b37/32.png) [@lucyfur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucyfur)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/5 "2000-05-19T18:21:45Z")
The year was 1877. Theodore Brinksly was working on the docks, unloading freightliners with goods from around the world. As each item arrived to port, he exclaimed “what’s this?” One of the freightliner crew would shout the item’s given name. “Bananas” Bananas?! Theodore would exclaim. That’s crazy!!! As the strange fruit progressed inland, from New York, to California, one could hear the laughter following the strange new food names. Crackers from England was a particularly silly looking one for old Theodore and has been a favorite ever since. ---
**Author:** ![gold1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gold1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gold1)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/6 "2000-05-19T18:23:15Z")
all right, I admit it, I’m just trying to keep my envelope red until someone addresses my question… ---
**Author:** ![lucyfur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e36b37/32.png) [@lucyfur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucyfur)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/7 "2000-05-19T18:43:55Z")
If you didn’t like Theodore’s story, perhaps you’ll like Nurse Elouis Crampton’s. Nurse Crampton was stationed at the “Shady Glades” assylum for the “sanity-impaired”. She studied under the tight guidance of Headmaster Stalingrad. Stalingrad was of the firm belief that each patient be addressed with their “food” affliction, rather than the actual clinical diagnosis for their mental instability. He believed that it was detrimental for a patient to ever actually hear the words Psychosis, or Schizophrenia, etc. He was in the assylum’s cafeteria when he developed the different “food” tags that went with each disease. I’m unable to uncover the correlations between Banana, cracker, etc., but there you have it. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2000, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/8 "2000-05-19T18:51:57Z")
“Bananas” is one of the most recent of these, probably cropping up in the late '60s. I would guess that it arose from the joke about “smoking bananas,” the UL that scraping the crud from the inside of the peel, drying it out, and smoking it would get one high. “He’s crazy…he’s been smokin’ bananas…he’s bananas.” ---
**Author:** ![gold1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gold1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gold1)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2000, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/9 "2000-05-22T15:42:13Z")
lucyfur, is that the real deal? If it is, I think I can relax now. Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2000, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/10 "2000-05-22T18:06:18Z")
I would guess that “bananas”, at least, means that the person is acting like a monkey. Dunno about the others, though. Probably, they’re all (or mostly) independent. ---
**Author:** ![SuaSponte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2000, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/11 "2000-05-22T19:52:59Z")
My guess is that the ignorant and superstitious people of an earlier era (pre-“Simpsons”) believed that certain foods could drive people insane. Not completely unbelievable when you consider that people once thought yummy tomatoes were poisonous. From there, it spread to besmirch the good names of other vittles. V. ---
**Author:** ![Timothy\_Campbell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Timothy\_Campbell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timothy_Campbell)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2000, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/12 "2000-05-22T20:01:18Z")
I would hazard a guess that this is partially a case of a mode of speech becoming entertaining and trendy. For example, somebody may have said that somebody was “cracked” (insinuating that his skull – and thus his brain – had been damaged), and this was gradually turned into “crackers”. People picked up on this food reference and started thinking of food words that sounded “funny” to them, like “banana” (the “nanananana” is the “funny” sounding part). Eventually the food/crazy trend became fixed. This has happened in other ways. A crazy person has been called “One brick short of a load”, “One ace short of a full deck”, and so on. This has mutated into “His elevators don’t go to the top floor” and so on. It’s just word play. We love doing it. ---
**Author:** ![funneefarmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@funneefarmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funneefarmer)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2000, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/13 "2000-05-22T20:46:22Z")
To give you a time frame for some of them from [Merrriam Webster](http://www.m-w.com/) Main Entry: nuts Pronunciation: 'n&ts Function: adjective Date: 1785 1 : ENTHUSIASTIC, KEEN \ 2 : INSANE, CRAZY \ Main Entry: ba·nan·as Pronunciation: b&-'na-n&z, esp British -'nä- Function: adjective Date: 1968 : CRAZY \ \ Main Entry: crack·ers Pronunciation: 'kra-k&rz Function: adjective Etymology: probably cracked + -ers (as in starkers) Date: 1928 : CRAZY Main Entry: fruit·cake Pronunciation: 'früt-"kAk Function: noun Date: 1848 1 : a rich cake containing nuts, dried or candied fruits, and spices 2 : NUT 6a —6 a : a foolish, eccentric, or crazy person b : ENTHUSIAST \ ---
**Author:** ![gold1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gold1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gold1)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2000, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/14 "2000-05-23T15:38:02Z")
Thank you all for generously answering my inane query. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2000, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/15 "2000-05-23T15:45:40Z")
You’re too kind, gold1. It is a good question, and I don’t think we’ve got close to answering it. I haven’t got a copy here, but has anyone got a copy of **Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable**? Might be a good place to check. I’ll at least add a WAG: at various times of the year particular creatures get frenzied. “Mad as a March Hare” reflects this. Perhaps the food references come from animal references. picmr ---
**Author:** ![Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/channing_idaho_banks/32/250_2.png) [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Channing_Idaho_Banks)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/16 "2017-01-30T18:10:11Z")
I’m sure it’s all just wordplay. His head is cracked turns into he’s cracked turns into he’s crackers turns into you’re crackers. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/17 "2017-01-30T18:21:20Z")
Used in a sentence: “You’re crackers for bumping a 17 year old thread to post that!” ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/18 "2017-01-30T18:30:22Z")
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, nut = head (listed from 1846) So ‘off his nut’ = ‘off his head’= crazy Hence ‘nutty’ -\> ‘as nutty as a fruitcake’ -\> ‘a fruitcake’ ‘His nut is cracked’ -\> ‘cracked’ -\> ‘crackers’ ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/20 "2017-01-31T15:09:19Z")
Dug out my dusty copy of Brewers:How hard was it to look something up before the internet… “Crackers” comes from “crack brained” (eccentric, slightly mad) nothing to do with biscuits. Nothing directly on bananas, but there is an old English word ‘_bannan_’, from which the word “ban” is derived. Apparently came to mean an ecclesiastical curse or a sense of outlawry. “Nutty” obviously is connected to the use of “nut” as slang for “head”. “Off his nut” (off his head) came before “nutty”. And then the more illustrative "nutty as a fruit cake \> “fruit cake”\>Slightly off topic: apparently Connecticut was once known as the “Nutmeg State”, because they allegedly manufactured wooden nutmegs. Does that mean that Connecticuters were called nutters? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978/21 "2017-01-31T15:52:26Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > … > Does that mean that Connecticuters were called nutters? Nope. They just drive that way. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-food-words-for-insanity/19978.md?page=2)