the heart of the matter
Meaning: The most important part of an issue.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “The heart of the matter is that nobody was responsible for checking the accounts.”
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: The heart stands for the center of a thing, a use as old as English itself. Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter (1948) made the phrase especially familiar.
Equivalents in other languages
- German: Da liegt der Hund begraben — literally: That's where the dog is buried
- Italian: qui casca l'asino — literally: here the donkey falls
More idioms — Body & Senses
- rub salt in the wound — To make someone's pain or humiliation worse.
- tread on someone's toes — To offend someone, especially by interfering in what they see as their business.
- get under someone's feet — To be in the way while someone is trying to work.
- keep one's feet on the ground — To stay realistic and unaffected by success.
- become second nature — To become so familiar that one does it without thinking.
- start off on the wrong foot — To begin something badly.
More English idioms
- put in one's two cents — To give one's opinion, whether or not it was asked for.
- play cat and mouse — To toy with someone one has power over.
- crunch time — The decisive moment, when there is no more time left.
- blow me down — An exclamation of complete surprise.
- get things back on track — To bring a situation back under control after it has gone wrong.
- be in for a rude awakening — To be about to discover an unpleasant truth.
From our untranslatable words
- Yugen — A profound, mysterious sense of the universe that is too deep for words — the feeling of…
- Koi no yokan — The intuitive feeling upon first meeting someone that you will inevitably fall in love wi…
- Amae — The comfortable feeling of depending on another's goodwill — leaning into someone's indul…