Word.ws English Dictionary

nitty gritty

nitty gritty is the alternative form of nitty-gritty.

Meaning of nitty-gritty

Noun

nitty-gritty (uncountable)

  1. (also, attributive, colloquial) The core or essence of something; the gist.
    • He gave a short summary without getting into the nitty-gritty of the problem.
    Synonyms:
    brass tacks, nuts and bolts, bowels, sum, core, crux, essence, gist, drift, guts

See all 2 meanings of nitty-gritty

Questions about nitty gritty

What is nitty gritty the alternative form of?
Nitty gritty is the alternative form of nitty-gritty.

Words near nitty gritty in the dictionary

  1. nittings
  2. Nitto
  3. Nittolo
  4. Nittolos
  5. nitty
  6. nitty gritty
  7. nitty-gritty
  8. nitwit
  9. nitwits
  10. nitwitted
  11. nitwittedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nitty gritty (page history and authors); nitty-gritty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “nitty gritty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nitty_gritty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.