Buzz
Have you ever heard an old joke, only to have someone else dismiss it as just another 'old chestnut'?
The label 'chestnut' isn’t limited to jokes. It can apply to anything from overused movie tropes to played-out songs, tired anecdotes, and overused clichés or stereotypes—anything that, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, has been 'repeated to the point of staleness.' But where does this peculiar expression come from?
Chestnuts themselves aren’t the source of the phrase. Linguistically, the name comes from French and Latin, derived from the Greek word for chestnut or chestnut tree, kastaneia. There’s some debate about its true origin. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that chestnuts were named after a town called Kastanea in Thessaly, while other sources argue the town might have been named after the trees, not the other way around. If this second theory holds, the word could be much older than we think, possibly originating in some even earlier language from southeast Europe or Asia Minor.
The link between chestnuts and old stories is more recent, and although several theories exist about its origin, experts believe the most likely explanation is that the term chestnut first appeared in theatrical circles in the United States during the mid-19th century.
In 1816, an English theatre manager and playwright named William Dimond staged his play, The Broken Sword, at the renowned Covent Garden Theatre in London (now the Royal Opera House). The opening scene of the play featured this exchange between two characters—Zavior, a bold naval captain, and his weary companion Pablo:
ZAVIOR: Let me see—ah! It’s exactly six years since … I mounted a mule in Barcelona, and set off for my homeland. On the dawn of the fourth day’s journey, I entered the Collares wood, when, suddenly, from the thick boughs of a cork-tree—PABLO: A chestnut, captain, a chestnut! … Captain, this is the twenty-seventh time you’ve told this story, and every time you’ve said 'a chestnut'—until now.
Although the play didn’t win much praise from critics, it had enough appeal to audiences to make its way to the United States. According to theatrical lore, it was during one of these American performances that the phrase 'old chestnut' is said to have emerged.
In an article from the mid-1880s, theatrical manager Martin W. Hanley shared a story of touring with a production of The Broken Sword when one of the actors began telling a humorous anecdote backstage. 'Everyone interrupted with shouts of “Chestnut!”' Hanley recalled. 'It stuck with the company all season and, of course, quickly spread throughout the profession.'
There are, admittedly, a couple of alternative versions of this story, each naming different actors, cities, and productions of The Broken Sword. Other theories suggest that 'chestnut' could be a corruption of the phrase just not, the surname Chestnut, or stories linked to patrons of a theatre on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. However, Dimond’s play remains the most likely source of our 'old chestnut'—unless, of course, all these tales turn out to be old chestnuts themselves.
