nitty-gritty
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
The core or essence of something.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
niteegriteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈnɪtiɡˈɹɪti
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
originally uscolloquialalso attributively
The core or essence of something; the gist.
adjective
colloquial
Dealing with something in great depth.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The core or essence of something; the gist.
Used this way, nitty-gritty is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in everyday conversation and social media or informal writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Casual
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Playful
- Usage feel
- Casual and conversational
Where it naturally appears
- Everyday conversation
- Social media/informal writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.