nitty-gritty
nounEtymology
Of uncertain origin; said to have been first used by black jazz musicians from the United States, the word is perhaps a reduplication of gritty (“resembling grit”) (ultimately from Proto-Germanic *greutą (“grit”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-) with alteration of the first syllable. An urban legend links the origin of the word to the debris remaining in the holds of slave ships after the slaves had been disembarked, but there is no evidence for this. The word is not attested early enough to have been associated with slavery.
- derived from *gʰrewd-✻
Definitions
The core or essence of something
The core or essence of something; the gist.
- He gave a short summary without getting into the nitty-gritty of the problem.
Dealing with something in great depth.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for nitty-gritty. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA