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I know the meaning of “in a nutshell” but do not know what “nutshell” or “nut” itself stands for in this idiom.
Since it is a metaphor, I would like to know what it recalls to the speakers/listeners’ mind whose first langage is English. Etymology of the idiom would also be greatly appreciated.
The shell of a nut tends to be small and compact, which is why "in a nutshell" is used to mean "in a few words," or, more literally, "in a compact statement."
According to Wiktionary, the etymology is as follows:
A calque of Latin in nuce.
"Calque" means "a word for word translation," and "in nuce" means "in a nut" in Latin.
I think that by definition, idioms have to be understood in their entirety; the meaning of the idiom does not necessarily correspond to the meaning of the individual words.
However, a nutshell is the shell, or outer covering, of a nut. Like this:
Inside a nutshell is a very small space, where you couldn't put very much. If you were trying to put an explanation inside a nutshell, it would have to be a very small one! - so "in a nutshell" means "in a very small and simple way".
According to some historical rumors, Pliny the Elder wrote that Cicero once found a copy of Homer's Iliad, written in minuscule letters compressed in a nutshell. Now the Iliad isn't particularly concise or anything, but that seems to be the origin of the concept as we know it today, if not the idiom itself. Here's a likeness of Pliny (AD 23- AD 79):
