nitty-gritty

Meaning

Noun

• The core or essence of something; the gist.

Origin

• Of Unknown; said to have been first used by black jazz musicians from the United States, the word is perhaps a (ultimately from Proto-Germanic *greutą, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-) with alteration of the first syllable.
• It has been suggested that the word originally referred to the debris remaining in the holds of slave ships after the slaves had been disembarked, but there is no evidence of such use before the 20th century when slavery was prevalent.