Meaning of wooden nutmeg | Babel Free

Definitions

Synonym of wooden nickel (“a worthless item intended to appear like another of value”).

Examples

“These were nearly all Yankees, regarded by the Southern people as a trafficking, tricky set⟳, ready to sell⟳ a wooden nutmeg or any other sham. They, in turn⟳, looked on the Kentuckians as a lazy, shiftless class, subsisting on hog, hominy and corn-bread, and willing tools in their hands.”

“But every child in the union knows that the most famous products of Connecticut are Yankee notions, nutmegs made of wood and clocks that won't go. Now, your Civil Service Reform⟳ is just such another Yankee notion; it's a wooden nutmeg; it's a clock with a show⟳ case and sham works. And you know⟳ it!”

“These predictions would probably all have⟳ been verified had it not been for the fact that Mr. Fall⟳ is one of those live⟳ Yankees who is always ready to whittle out a wooden nutmeg while waiting for his horse to gain⟳ wind when stuck in the mud.”

“The assumption in the public mind⟳ was that anyone who bought a wooden nutmeg was a fool who should have⟳ known better than to fall⟳ for a trick⟳. But because the real as a cultural value is no longer being privileged over the artificial, this simple assumption about simulacra has now become⟳ a sort⟳ of ontological fossil”

CEFR level