The idiom “getting to the point” is used to distinguish fact from fiction or abstract thinking. The origin of the phrase “getting off the brass tacks” is unclear, but it may have originated from upholstery or the garment industry. Other phrases with similar meanings include “getting to the bottom of” something.
When English speakers talk about “getting to the point,” they are talking about discussing and realizing the basic facts in a situation. This basic idiom is used to distinguish fact from fiction, or ambiguous from abstract thinking. This is one of several popular phrases in the English language to guide a process towards a concrete conclusion.
Many people attribute the origin of the phrase “getting off the brass tacks” to the state of Texas. The phrase is thought to have originated in the 1800s and was regularly used in newspapers of that era. It was not uncommon for reporters to talk about “getting to the point”, which is commonly regarded as one of the primary functions of their job roles. The ordinary reporter relies on sifting through vague information to establish corroborated facts, and this may have led to the phrase “brass pins” appearing quite frequently in their copy.
As for the creation of this phrase, many people think that coming up with brass tacks originally had to do with the upholstery talk. In some chairs and other furniture, a row of brass tacks helps hold the upholstered elements to the frame. In these cases it may be necessary to access the pins to really assess the state of the furniture. This would make sense in the way the phrase is used metaphorically to dig through information to find facts.
Other explanations for the origin of the phrase include elements from the garment industry, where small brass tacks were used to measure yards of fabric. There is also the idea that this phrase may have come from traditional British slang, where individuals of a “cockney” persuasion used rhyming words to effectively encode their speech. Since “brass thumbtacks” rhymes with “fact,” some argue that the phrase was simply a common Cockney twist on the literal word.
A variety of phrases in English are used in much the same way as the phrase “go down to the brass tacks.” One of these is ‘getting to the bottom of’ something, where ‘getting to the bottom’ reveals much more about what is in a container and is used figuratively to research an abstract scenario or puzzle. The root meaning of both would be “ascertain the truth”.
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