Meaning
The fundamentals; the most basic, essential, or central part of something, as in 'the meat and potatoes of the deal'. As an adjective before a noun it describes what is plain, basic, and unpretentious, whether food, work, or a person's tastes. The register is informal and the flavour is unmistakably American. Informal; hyphenate the attributive adjective (a meat-and-potatoes approach). It praises solidity, so it can sound faintly dismissive of refinement. Regional use: American English.
Origin
An American idiom built on the literal staple meal of meat served with potatoes, the presumed basics of the diet. Merriam-Webster dates the hyphenated adjective meat-and-potatoes, defined as of fundamental importance or basic, to 1846, and the noun use - 'the meat and potatoes of' a subject, for its most basic and important part - to 1951. Christine Ammer's Dictionary of Idioms calls it a chiefly American metaphor transferring the idea that meat and potatoes are the basics of what people eat, and says figurative use arose in the mid-twentieth century; that estimate sits slightly later than Merriam-Webster's 1846 adjective file, a gap worth flagging rather than resolving, since the 1846 citation may reflect a literal description of a meal. Collins labels the phrase informal, for things plain and without anything unnecessary, and Wikipedia records the US idiomatic sense of something fundamental or unpretentious alongside the worldwide family of literal meat-and-potato dishes.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy
- meat-and-potatoes (adjective)
- the meat and potatoes of something
Usage Examples
- Fancy footwork is useful, but passing and tackling remain the meat and potatoes of rugby.
- The workshop covered the meat and potatoes of contract law: offers, acceptance, and consideration.
- He is a meat-and-potatoes kind of traveller who prefers roadside diners to tasting menus.