Nitty-gritty redux

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 06:55:17PM -0000, Michael Quinion wrote:
> Looking for something else, I stumbled across this pastiche in the
> Daily Journal (Commerce, Texas) for 19 June 1956. Note the presence
> of "nitty gritty" - is this earlier than previous examples?

OED has a 1952 example, but this antedates our earliest adjectival
use (which had been 1964).

Jesse Sheidlower
OED