A wingnut is a handy, stabilizing piece of hardware. So how did it come to be a pejorative term for those of a particular political persuasion? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Wingnut”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Karina Osberg from Jackson, Wyoming.
Karina from Jackson?
Yes.
Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you?
Well, I had a conversation with a friend of mine a while back. It actually happened right after the election. And she was saying that, I just don’t understand it. He’s such a wingnut. Then she sort of paused and she said, why do we use the word wingnut for people that do crazy things? Because wingnuts are really useful. They’re handy. They’re smart. So why do we use this word to describe something that’s kind of out there? So I have no idea. Why do we call certain people on the political spectrum wingnuts when that little metal piece that we use to hold things together is so useful?
Exactly. You know, what’s funny is that this term really, really came into its own after the 2000 election. Do you remember this? All the hullabaloo after Bush v. Gore and all that, and there was a lot of rancor. It reminds me very much of the 2016 political campaign. It’s just a lot of angry chatter back and forth. Does that ring a bell? Yeah. And at the time I looked into this term, I helped William Sapphire come up with some stuff on this for his column that he was writing for the New York Times. And I did a political slang dictionary in 2003. So I’ve dug into this before. And what’s really interesting is it’s pretty simple. It’s just a shortening of the term right-wing nut, and nut meaning a person who is out of their nut or out of their head. That means not expressing, not having common sense or common behavior. Or have a screw loose. Yeah, or have a screw loose. So wing nut used as it is today is nearly always somebody on the right side of the political spectrum, and there’s a wide variety of matching terms on the left, such as pinko commie or left-wing loon or what have you. Fruit bat.
Fruit bat, yeah.
So, yeah, it’s just a shortening of right wing nut.
Huh.
Yeah, that’s it.
I had no idea.
Pretty simple, right?
That’s interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is really simple.
Huh.
Well, thank you so much.
Yeah, my pleasure.
It’s funny, though, as wing nut continues to be used, I just don’t see the matching left terms quite as often.
They come up with all new ones every four years, I think.
Yeah, that was my question.
They’re so much more creative.
Yeah, you know, the world is complicated and interesting, and why just call each other the same insults over and over? And we can come up with new ones.
I know.
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate this lesson. I didn’t realize it was actually just a political term. I thought it was something that was used for other things.
No, yeah, it’s just mainly a political term.
Thanks so much for calling, Karina. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
And terms for the sinner are really rare. Did you know that? Like, there’s things like fence sitter and the man trying to ride two horses and things like that. But like really snappy zingers for people who won’t choose a side or independents, those are really, really rare.
What about mugwump?
Mugwump.
What’s that?
That’s like an old muckety-muck, isn’t it?
Well, isn’t that somebody who’s sitting on a fence and their mug is on one side and their wump is on the other? Am I wrong?
I don’t know.
I don’t remember that one.
I should recall something like that. I remember the term, but I don’t remember that. That sounds an unlikely origin story. I feel like I’ve seen a cartoon. I’ll let it go this time.
It could be.
It could be unlikely origin. But I have this mental picture of someone. Mug on one side and wamp on the other. Hilarious.
The first thing that came to my mind in reference to the “wingnut” call was the character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe whose name is Wingnut. He, along with his compatriot Screwloose, are alien/animal creatures who antagonize the turtles and (at least in the comic series) are not the brightest minds.
I’ve no clue if that character had any bearing at all on the caller’s usage of the word “wingnut” to just mean a generally not very smart person, but it certainly popped into my head as soon as I heard the call. And if I’d heard someone use the word in that type of context, I’d immediately understand what they were meaning by it. It would have never entered my mind that it was a political term.
I like the speculative nature of your discussion on “wingnut” but you missed a great opportunity to share a broader history. Describing a person of questionable stability as a “wingnut” predates the 2000 election by a very long way. Mechanics have used the term from time immemorial to describe someone as we would someone with a “screw loose” because wing nuts can only ever be hand tightened. They are prone to coming loose (dislodged, dangerous) very easily.
That said, while it is logical for someone to shorten “right wing nut” to “wing nut” I find it interesting you mention it is used almost exclusively by the left wing to describe the right . I would have thought righty tighy, lefty loosy would have made this term more appropriate for a “left wing nut” – a “loose nut” being less desirable than a “tight” one,.