nitty-gritty

Origin: Of origin; said to have been first used by black jazz musicians from the United States, the word is perhaps a (ultimately from , from ) with alteration of the first . An urban legend links the origin of the word to the debris remaining in the holds of slave ships after the slaves had been disembarked, but there is no evidence for this. The word is not attested early enough to have been associated with slavery. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).