Meaning
The practical, basic details of how something really works - the working parts, the routine mechanics, the fundamentals that must be handled before anything grand can be achieved. From the humble threaded fasteners that hold machinery together: cheap, numerous, unglamorous and utterly essential. Usually the nuts and bolts of a subject, plan or process. Near synonyms include brass tacks and the nitty-gritty, both already catalogued on this site. The attributive form is hyphenated (a nuts-and-bolts guide). Regional use: American origin; now standard in British and international English.
Origin
An American coinage of the mid-twentieth century. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1947 - earlier than the 1950s-60s dating sometimes given - defining the phrase as the working parts or elements and the practical workings of a machine or enterprise as opposed to theoretical considerations. Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches calls it an allusion to basic machine parts dating only from the mid-twentieth century, and quotes T. E. Allbeury, A Choice of Enemies (1973): 'That's pretty well a nuts and bolts area for us. We know it inside out.' McGraw-Hill's idiom dictionary glosses it as the mundane workings or basics of something.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- get down to the nuts and bolts
- nuts-and-bolts guide
Usage Examples
- The conference covered grand strategy; the workshop covered the nuts and bolts of filing the forms.
- Before we argue philosophy, let us settle the nuts and bolts: who collects the money, and when?
- She knows the nuts and bolts of the export licence process better than anyone in the office.