meat and potatoes
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
the basic or fundamental parts of something
Literally: basic food items
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Meat and potatoes, not scallops and prawns.
And design your dinner so that everyone can eat the same thing and enjoy it — with the recipes below, even the greediest red meat - and - potatoes man will feel he's had his fill!
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “meat and potatoes” mean?
the basic or fundamental parts of something Literally: basic food items
Is “meat and potatoes” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.