Dictionary

nuts and bolts en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) The basic inner workings of something; the fundamentals; that which makes something operate.
   • The Duke intended to make Brora the nerve centre of the railway, and built a large engineering works near the station in which he planned to manufacture everything from nuts and bolts to locomotives. 1960 January 14, Iain D. O. Frew, “The Brora Colliery Tramway”, in Railway Magazine, page 56:
   • It also involves working with the nuts and bolts of management and leadership. 2010, Virginia A. Walter, Twenty-First-Century Kids, Twenty-First-Century Librarians, page 77:
   • The information presented in the previous chapters gives the nuts and bolts of the most common and basic techniques used to prove the truth of mathematical results. 2011, Antonella Cupillari, The Nuts and Bolts of Proofs: An Introduction to Mathematical Proofs, page 71:
   • It's really not so hard, once you know the nuts and bolts of the editing process.
   • Perhaps those who analyze the prospects for government in an Islamic state based on the works of these theorists forget that, after the revolution, lofty ideals and Utopias are discarded for the nuts and bolts of day-to-day governing. 1999, Daniel E. Price, Islamic Political Culture, Democracy, and Human Rights: A Comparative Study, page 31:

Forms

Deriveds

get down to nuts and bolts

Relateds

low-level

Synonyms

brass tacks (basic or fundamental workings) · nitty-gritty

Translations (4)

it i dettagli (inner workings of something) · fr rudiments (inner workings of something) · de A und O (inner workings of something) · ru азы́ (inner workings of something)