How to Use brass tacks in a Sentence

brass tacks

plural noun
  • The next sessions were more about getting down to brass tacks.
    — Matthew Schnipper, The New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2023
  • His plays demonstrate a fierce effort to get down to brass tacks.
    — Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2025
  • With so much more to get to, the show wastes no time in getting down to brass tacks.
    — Lauren Huff, Entertainment Weekly, 8 Jan. 2026
  • Some of this is brass tacks, but needed to be redone and re-looked at.
    — Megan Poinski, Forbes, 3 Sep. 2024
  • Yet even as leaders get down to brass tacks, there’s plenty that can change.
    — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Sometimes the most creative thing a person can do is strip things down to brass tacks.
    — Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 19 Apr. 2022
  • Down to the brass tacks what are these general assertions telling us?
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 23 Feb. 2011
  • Other aspiring politicians were ready to get down to brass tacks.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 2026
  • But with both sides trying to keep options open, there has been little candid talk about brass tacks.
    — Alexander Coolidge, USA TODAY, 8 Oct. 2017
  • One of the roles of journalists is to separate brass tacks from bullshine.
    — Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, 26 Sep. 2017
  • Carefully discuss each function and brainstorm down to brass tacks.
    — Kelly Starman, Forbes.com, 21 Aug. 2025
  • Shoppers can browse Fair casually or get right to the brass tacks of what the company will agree to sell, er, lease them.
    — David Muller, Car and Driver, 10 Oct. 2017
  • As these groups grapple with existential questions, others are focused on brass tacks.
    — Lee Seymour, Forbes, 28 Apr. 2021
  • The Center and the Square have dozens of shops selling a variety of wares from books and brass tacks to boots and bangles.
    — Joan Walden, courant.com, 19 Jan. 2018
  • Chapek, by contrast, has a reputation for transactional brass tacks and a bottom-line–first ethos.
    — Nicole Gull McElroy, Fortune, 16 June 2022
  • The conversations can be searching, get philosophical, then quickly veer back to brass tacks.
    — Tina Nguyen, The Hive, 11 June 2018
  • The goal of the course was to infuse problem sets on policy dilemmas and philosophical debates with the brass tacks of coding.
    — Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2021
  • But the point of this article is to get down to brass tacks and simply show the relationship between housing costs and worker shortages.
    — Atticus Leblanc, Forbes, 18 Jan. 2022
  • But in the private markets, as a reporter, brass tacks numbers on how startups and the VC firms that back them are performing are a whole lot harder to come by.
    — Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 24 Apr. 2024
  • After a quick discussion about why grown men continue to insist on wearing baseball caps and jerseys, the trio gets down to brass tacks solving listener problems.
    — Leigh Cesiro, Vulture, 14 Jan. 2021
  • Another has been a slight pivot away from business brass tacks to individual development.
    — Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal, 31 Oct. 2025
  • The former first lady’s version was pink chiffon with porcelain beading, but Ford stripped the idea down to brass tacks outfitting Moore in white crème silk and ivory kid gloves.
    — Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 6 May 2022
  • Rae reveals that key elements of the finale were up in the air until very late in the game, from the final decision on the show’s enduring love triangle to the brass tacks of the script itself.
    — Angelique Jackson, Variety, 26 Dec. 2021
  • Down to brass tacks, Kaffee believes the teenage Marines were merely following orders, to exercise a Code Red.
    — Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Dec. 2024
  • All this gets caught up in relatively broad and esoteric debates about immigration as a virtue and levels of enforcement, but at brass tacks, this is a practical issue.
    — New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 14 Feb. 2025
  • Few monogamous couples, that is, get down to the brass tacks of chalking the contours—or, rather, the borders—of their coupledom, including those inclined to discuss their transition to exclusivity.
    — Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2024
  • The sensitivity of Newkirk’s reporting and the gravity of his voice allow for a kind of grieving in addition to a revisiting of the brass tacks of what actually happened.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 7 June 2021
  • Teachers and administrators, particularly those who work with at-risk student groups like English learners and those experiencing poverty, can more easily talk brass tacks with kids.
    — oregonlive, 10 May 2020
  • The Weekly Standard’s version of conservatism was one that was supposed to be untethered — to candidates or specific matters of policy or even to the brass tacks of politics itself.
    — Jane Coaston, Vox, 14 Dec. 2018
  • The following two days, after a panel discussion about the development of opera in the 21st century, Cleveland Opera Theater will get down to brass tacks with a scenes workshop.
    — Patrick Cooley, cleveland.com, 18 Jan. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'brass tacks.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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