Idiom
hit the nail on the head
Meaning
To identify something exactly; to arrive at exactly the right answer.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“You hit the nail on the head with that answer.”
“When she said the problem was poor communication, she hit the nail on the head.”
“The critic hit the nail on the head when he wrote that the film's real weakness was its slow, confusing script.”
Examples
simple
“You hit the nail on the head with that answer.”
contextual
“When she said the problem was poor communication, she hit the nail on the head.”
complex
“The critic hit the nail on the head when he wrote that the film's real weakness was its slow, confusing script.”
Origin
From carpentry — striking the nail squarely; figurative use attested as early as The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1438).
Key words
Related idioms
- Level
- B1 · Intermediate
- Updated