Conkers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A game played with chestnuts that are threaded on a string and struck against one another to see which will break first
2. Hard, glossy seeds from the horse chestnut tree, often used in children's games but can also refer to the game itself
3. An outdoor activity involving battle-like striking of two suspended hard nuts to determine which will last longer without breaking

Etymology: Conkers is the plural of "conker", the name for the glossy brown seed of the horse chestnut tree, and the game is named after the nut. The surprising part is that the game came first. Children were playing with horse chestnuts, threading one on a string and taking turns striking each other's nut until one broke, long before the nut itself was widely called a conker. Because the game appeared before the modern sense of the word, the plural form was not built from a settled noun meaning "horse chestnut" in the way a simple plural usually is. Instead, the word's history runs backward from the activity to the object, and the everyday noun took on its present meaning as the game spread.

Synonyms: chestnuts, seeds