the.com/long and short of it
All the detail got voted off the island; this survived.
means The brief, essential summary of a matter once all the padding is stripped away.
from Dates to the 1500s, from the idea of measuring something regardless of whether you take its long or short dimension — either way you arrive at the same total truth. Shakespeare used the phrase, which helped cement it in everyday English, and it has stayed almost unchanged for 400-plus years.
- origin
- shorthand predates abbreviation as we know it, 1500s
- shakespeare used it
- merry wives of windsor, 1600
- structure
- two opposites fused into one lazy summary
- function
- signals you skipped the boring middle part