Nutmegger is a nickname for people from the US state of

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. The official nickname for Connecticut is "The Constitution State", as voted in 1958 by the Connecticut state legislature; however "The Nutmeg State" is an unofficial nickname for the state, hence the nickname "Nutmegger". The origin of the appellation is unknown. One theory is that it comes from

Yankee The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United S ...

peddlers selling

nutmeg Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...

s in colonial times. These nutmegs may have been the real thing, i.e., the hard aromatic seed of the nutmeg tree (''Myristica fragrans''), an East Indian evergreen tree, or counterfeit wooden nutmegs; or, as has been suggested, they were the real thing but customers unfamiliar with the native form of the spice might have decided they had been sold a counterfeit after futilely trying to grind the unusually hard seed. A popular newspaper column in the 1830s was "The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville", which has often been cited as the source of this legend. The original story was:The Clockmaker — or, the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville
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... that eternal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of
Nahant Nahant is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,334 at the 2020 census, which makes it the smallest municipality by population in Essex County. With just of land area, it is the smallest municipality by are ...
, he used to trade to Charleston, and he carried a cargo once there of fifty barrels of nutmegs: well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each end of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones, so like the real thing, no soul could tell the difference until HE BIT ONE WITH HIS TEETH, and that he never thought of doing, until he was first BIT HIMSELF. Well, it's been a standing joke with them southerners agin us ever since.

References

American regional nicknames Connecticut culture {{connecticut-stub