bare bones

plural noun

1. the irreducible minimum; the most essential components:

   Reduce this report to its bare bones. There is nothing left of the town but the bare bones—a couple of stores, a church, and a few houses.

bare-bones

adjective

1. basic or simple; no-frills

Other Words From

• bare-bones adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of bare bones¹

First recorded in 1910–15

Idioms and Phrases

The mere essentials or plain, unadorned framework of something, as in This outline gives just the bare bones of the story; details will come later . This phrase transfers the naked skeleton of a body to figurative use. [c. 1900]

Example Sentences

This year, a bare-bones welfare program will continue into the New Year without being updated.

From The Daily Beast

Maybe, just maybe he'd be able to get the message across if he stripped it down to its bare bones.

From The Daily Beast

The bare bones of an already-anemic effort to fight the epidemic in West Africa that is threatening to destroy the entire region.

From The Daily Beast

As TechCrunch pointed out, the brilliance in its bare bones appeal could reach a worth of one billion dollars.

From The Daily Beast

He was getting only the bare bones, none of the rich details that make a book sing.

From The Daily Beast

Here in a few paragraphs are the bare bones of the plan described in eighty of Henry James's pages.

From Project Gutenberg

A lot of speculation necessarily clothed the bare bones of Jones' information.

From Project Gutenberg

Hiawatha looked on wistfully to see them eat till they were fully satisfied, and they left him nothing but the bare bones.

From Project Gutenberg

It was the bare bones of this old earth, as sombre and foreboding as any ruin of granite under the wrack of the bleak north.

From Project Gutenberg

I have lived to see the people who go into the desert for adventure, and whose bare bones are all any man looks on again!

From Project Gutenberg