Getting down to brass tacks?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

How often do you hear and/or use the idiom “let’s get down to brass tackss”? I’m asking because I came across this phrase in an ESL textbook but so far I have never heard a native speaker use it.

Thanks,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, question-response: Where did you get that outfit?[YSaerTTEW443543]

2

.
I know the expression “get down to brass tacks” – I’ve never heard the expression used with “tags” instead, though.
.

3

Hi Amy! How often do you use the phrase ‘to get down to brass tacks’?
Thank you,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, question-response: Good game, wasn’t it?[YSaerTTEW443543]

4

Hi Torsten

“How often” is tough to quantify. I’d say I use the expression occasionally, not too often.
[color=white].

EDIT:
You can read a bit about the expression’s history here:
wordorigins.org/index.php/brass_tacks/
.

5

Hi Amy,

Thanks a lot for that. I was aware of the origin of the phrase – just wanted to know how often it is used by native speakers.
Regards,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, question-response: How often should I send updates?[YSaerTTEW443543]

6

.
I’d say it gets a fairly respectable amount of use. I’d also guess there are probably people who never use it as well as people who use it more often than I do.

If you do a search in the American Corpus, for example, you will get more results for “down to brass tacks” (24) than you get for “raining cats and dogs” (17). On the other hand, a collocation such as “down to business” gets far more results (248).
.