meat and potatoes
6
3.9
- noun
- Informal
:
lo esencial
- Now the meat and potatoes of what I would like to say, since you brought it up.
- meat-and-potatoes kind
- meat and potatoes fare
- meat-and-potatoes meal
It's just like the meat and potatoes of what you would send your friend.
- It's just like the meat and potatoes of what you would send your friend.
- All right, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this thing.
- You got the meat and potatoes there.
Examples
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Instead, I went through a variety of sources and did my best to uncover the meat and potatoes of what's actually happening.
Blog text (4) -
The interior—this is the meat and potatoes of a book.
Blog text (13) -
OK, so this is the meat and potatoes of this build.
-
All right, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this thing.
-
I guess i'm just a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
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For example, the firm and the market are the "meat and potatoes" topics of Industrial Organization economics.
Academic text (1999) -
That's the meat and potatoes of the discussion.
Blog text (8) -
We are still feeding our secondary students pablum when they ought to have graduated to meat and potatoes!
Academic text (1991) -
Yes, there is a main storyline, but that's hardly the meat and potatoes of the game.
Blog text (19) -
In our discussion about the project, let's focus on the meat and potatoes of the issue to understand its core problems.
Synonyms
78
5.5
The main part of an idea or talk that matters most
12
3.5
The most important part of something, often in a recipe or plan
4
3.0
A thing you need for a recipe, process, or result to work
1
3.5
An important thing needed for something to work or succeed
Antonyms
How Essential
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal words 'meat' and 'potatoes' evoke substance and staple foods, so the extension to 'the basic or substantial part' is partially inferable from the constituents. However, the idiomatic pairing is a conventional metaphorical collocation in English, so a B1 learner might guess the general sense but would not reliably predict the exact idiomatic meaning without prior exposure or cultural knowledge.
Etymology
Meat and potatoes comes from a simple, filling meal where meat and potatoes are the main, basic foods people relied on. That's why it now means the 'essentials' or the 'most important' part of something.