bare bones

See also: barebones and bare-bones

English

By metaphor with the skeleton versus the whole body including the flesh.

bare bones pl (plural only)

The essential elements of something; the minimum viable set of elements; especially when they are described without going into detail.
He had only been taught the bare bones of the system, but carried on regardless.
- 1982 April 10, Michael Bronski, “We Are How We Cook”, in Gay Community News, page 7:
  The bare bones of a cookbook are its recipes, but as a genre it is so elastic and malleable that it can contain a range of other purposes and dimensions.