nuts to butts
- idiom
- Slang
:
apretados como sardinas
- The subway was so crowded it was nuts to butts all the way to my stop.
Examples
-
During the concert, we were standing nuts to butts near the stage.
-
We were nuts to butts in the backseat of the car during the long trip.
-
They packed the boxes in the truck nuts to butts to fit everything in.
-
We were nuts to butts in the backseat.
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The kids were nuts to butts in the playroom!
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The subway was so crowded it was nuts to butts all the way to my stop.
-
During the concert, we were standing nuts to butts near the stage.
Synonyms
58
1.0
Near each other with very little space between them
12
1.3
Pressed tightly together in a small space
4
5.6
People stand or sit very close together in a small crowded space
1
8.2
So full that there is little or no space
1
4.9
Items that have almost no space between them
Standing very close together with little space between them
How Crowded
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'packed very closely' is not transparently built from the listed constituents: 'nuts' typically means 'crazy' (or slang for testicles) and does not signal crowding, while 'to' and 'butt(s)' alone do not create a clear spatial/compositional pattern. This colloquial idiom requires cultural/usage knowledge and is not predictable from the parts, so a B1 learner who only knows the individual words would probably not infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Nuts to butts may come from the image of people or things standing so close that one person's nuts are next to another person's butts. One popular story says that when a crowd, cars, or boxes press together like this, they are 'packed very closely together', which is why the phrase means that today.