where did the saying that old chestnut come from
Chestnut (joke) A plausible explanation for the term given by the Oxford English Dictionary is that it originates from a play named "The Broken Sword" by William Dimond,[1] in which one character keeps repeating the same stories, one of them about a cork tree, and is interrupted each time by another character who says: Chestnut, you mean ... I have heard you tell the joke twenty-seven times and I am sure it was a chestnut. The play was first performed in 1816, but the term did not come into widespread usage until the 1880s.
A Wise Old Owl The rhyme refers to the traditional image of owls as the symbol of wisdom. It was recorded as early as 1875 and is apparently older than that.[2] It was quoted by John D. Rockefeller in 1915[1] and is frequently misattributed to Edward Hersey Richards.[3][4][5]