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Mentor Josephan's Idiom of The Day #4
6 years agoThe BOTTOM LINE
1. The most important aspect of something.
You have all made compelling arguments, but the bottom line is that we need a viable, cost-effective solution, and I still don't think we've found one yet.
2. The net result.
You’ve told me about the down payment, the closing costs, the interest rate, and the price of the house. What’s the bottom line? How much money am I actually going to have to spend on this house?
3. The simple and irrefutable truth.
You and I can argue around and around on this issue, but the bottom line is that our children will have to go to college if they want to get well-paid jobs in the future.
Synonyms: long and short of it, nitty-gritty
The expression is often used to describe a monetary figure (sentence 2), but it also describes the basic, (supposedly) undeniable truth of an argument (sentence 2&3).
The expression probably originates from the accounting practice of adding together the profits and subtracting the costs to arrive at a final figure under the bottom line on a spreadsheet or in a ledger or account book.
Idiom: a group of words that means something different than the individual words it contains.
"Americans use about four idioms in every minute of conversation. If you don't see the light of American English Idiom, you're in the dark understanding American English!" Mentor Josephan P. Sterling
Every day I will post a new Idiom, so stay tuned to Mentor Josephan's Idiom of The Day.
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