Okay, sorry, you're right. Brass tacks is not one word. But when you write it all together like that it looks really funny. Like, my brain wants to split the word between the s's, so I read bras stacks, which in terms of plurality doesn't make much sense but still makes me chuckle when I read it. It's...
Uh, beside the point. What were we talking about? Right, brass, tacks, and brasstacks.
Huh hee he ho hoo.
All right, let's talk about brass. It's a metal, used to build without doubt the best family of instruments in the world, that is a compound of two parts copper and one part zinc. The Old English word, bræs, actually meant "brass OR bronze", bronze being an alloy of copper and tin. A weird side-effect of this is that anywhere in the King James translation of the English Bible you see "brass", the original text probably intended "bronze", especially where armor or weapons were concerned since bronze was used widely to make armor and weapons before the widespread use of iron, and brass actually wasn't. Also weird is the fact that beyond this Old English root, the word doesn't seem to be related to any of the other Indo-European language's words for brass, and none of them seem to be related to each other either. It's not real clear why this is.
Okay, now tacks, which are much more straightforward. The modern definition, basically meaning "nail", hails from about the 13th century, where we got it from the 12th century Old North French word taque. That word likely comes from Germanic roots, actually, from Low German takk which sprung from proto-Germanic tag- prefix, which meant "small, flat headed nail."
So, where does the phrase "let's get down to brass tacks" come from? Brass, being a metal, could obviously be used to make tacks, and has been since probably the very first time the alloy was created. So let's see, where would you use brass tacks... upholstery? Yeah, they're used in upholstery, have been for decades, centuries. Once you "get down" to the Brass tacks in that process you're doing the final fastening of the cloth to the furniture itself, which is... sorta like "let's get down to the business at hand", in that... it's detailed work?
That's the best I've got. As with most things in English, we're probably not going to logically reason our way around why "let's get down to brass tacks" means the same thing as "let's get down to business", right?
Okay, let's dig a little then. "Brass tacks" that you "get down to" hails from the late 1800's, and... "perhaps are the ones said to have been nailed to the counters of a dry goods stores and used to measure cloth"? Um... maybe? The suggestion there is that those brass tacks were precisely measured, and the metaphor does suggest "precision", which is actually sorta how we reasoned ourselves to upholstering, but both those origins seem equally as unlikely, and...
Wait, here's an advertisement from 1911 that specifically mentions the phrase. Surely the writers of this ad were close enough to the advent of the metaphor they'd have an easier time figuring out which of the two most plausible origins really led to its adoption.
" 'Getting down to brass tacks' is a characteristic American slang phrase, full of suggestion but of obscure origin."
Oh. Huh. Apparently it's characteristic of American slang to be of obscure origin. So somebody just made it up and it gained popularity because it sounded cool?
Yup. That's English. Neat.
Uh, beside the point. What were we talking about? Right, brass, tacks, and brasstacks.
Huh hee he ho hoo.
All right, let's talk about brass. It's a metal, used to build without doubt the best family of instruments in the world, that is a compound of two parts copper and one part zinc. The Old English word, bræs, actually meant "brass OR bronze", bronze being an alloy of copper and tin. A weird side-effect of this is that anywhere in the King James translation of the English Bible you see "brass", the original text probably intended "bronze", especially where armor or weapons were concerned since bronze was used widely to make armor and weapons before the widespread use of iron, and brass actually wasn't. Also weird is the fact that beyond this Old English root, the word doesn't seem to be related to any of the other Indo-European language's words for brass, and none of them seem to be related to each other either. It's not real clear why this is.
Okay, now tacks, which are much more straightforward. The modern definition, basically meaning "nail", hails from about the 13th century, where we got it from the 12th century Old North French word taque. That word likely comes from Germanic roots, actually, from Low German takk which sprung from proto-Germanic tag- prefix, which meant "small, flat headed nail."
So, where does the phrase "let's get down to brass tacks" come from? Brass, being a metal, could obviously be used to make tacks, and has been since probably the very first time the alloy was created. So let's see, where would you use brass tacks... upholstery? Yeah, they're used in upholstery, have been for decades, centuries. Once you "get down" to the Brass tacks in that process you're doing the final fastening of the cloth to the furniture itself, which is... sorta like "let's get down to the business at hand", in that... it's detailed work?
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| Ooh, not just upholstery! |
That's the best I've got. As with most things in English, we're probably not going to logically reason our way around why "let's get down to brass tacks" means the same thing as "let's get down to business", right?
Okay, let's dig a little then. "Brass tacks" that you "get down to" hails from the late 1800's, and... "perhaps are the ones said to have been nailed to the counters of a dry goods stores and used to measure cloth"? Um... maybe? The suggestion there is that those brass tacks were precisely measured, and the metaphor does suggest "precision", which is actually sorta how we reasoned ourselves to upholstering, but both those origins seem equally as unlikely, and...
Wait, here's an advertisement from 1911 that specifically mentions the phrase. Surely the writers of this ad were close enough to the advent of the metaphor they'd have an easier time figuring out which of the two most plausible origins really led to its adoption.
" 'Getting down to brass tacks' is a characteristic American slang phrase, full of suggestion but of obscure origin."
Oh. Huh. Apparently it's characteristic of American slang to be of obscure origin. So somebody just made it up and it gained popularity because it sounded cool?
Yup. That's English. Neat.
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