Talk:get down to brass tacks

Etymology

• Schott's Original Miscellany claims "Brass Tacks" is Cockney rhyming slang for "facts". Is this a back formation? Despite the reference's claim that this is of American origin, this sounds plausible. --BDD (talk) 14:15, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Just a thought: I always assumed this was part of planning or taking inventory for furniture construction, for example. If you accounted for everything needed, included tiny brass tacks, you had thought of everything. The quotations suggest future tense, very small, planning or negotiation details.

Another theory: perhaps "tacks" is a corruption of "Taps" wikipedia:Taps: "a bugle call played at dusk, during flag ceremonies, and at military funerals by the United States Armed Forces". A bugle is a brass instrument, so "Brass Taps" makes sense, and one could easily mishear it as "Brass Tacks". The expression "brass tacks" seems to have been coined around the same time that "Taps" was first used by the US military. (Gbeauregard (talk) 01:57, 1 June 2020 (UTC))

Archived feedback

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Feedback (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

get down to brass tacks

It might be interesting to note the similarity with the Dutch "spijkers met koppen slaan" (also see http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/spijker) which literally translates to hitting nails with heads. In Dutch this is a saying which stems from the 17th century (http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/spijker1) and which means "to get things done (good)" or "to get down to business". The "heads" would refer to the fact that nails with heads give a better bond than the ones without. I would not be surprised if there is a shared etymology between the Dutch and the American sayings.

brass tacks (plural noun) : the basics (informal)

brass tacks (plural noun) : the most basic or fundamental parts of a situation or issue (informal) --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:53, 17 October 2020 (UTC)