RE: This27 Feb 2019 09:10
With thanks to the Telegraph so we all know we are safe using it
Nitty-gritty was first recorded in use in the 1950s, with the meaning "heart of the matter" or "core".
The Oxford English Dictionary quotes the field secretary of America's National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, W C Patton, who in 1963 remarked: "Now we're down to the nitty-gritty, the hard core who've never been interested in politics."
Recently it has been suggested that, in the phrase "get down to the nitty-gritty" the word once referred to the detritus left after a slave ship was emptied.
This can scarcely be true, since there was no evidence of its use either in the slavery years or for many decades afterwards.