"basic facts," 1961, knitty-gritty, Amer.Eng., said to have been chiefly used by black jazz musicians, perhaps ult. from nit and grits "finely ground corn."
n. the essence; the essential points. (Usually in get down to the nitty-gritty.) : Once we are down to the nitty-gritty, we can begin to sort things out.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Example sentences
Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
It's time for a second report on the nitty-gritty of my frugal budget.
And he needs to abandon the rhetorical high ground for the nitty-gritty of policy.
His algorithms are good at the nitty-gritty of generating completely novel protein sequences for a particular purpose.