nutshell

Fig. to state something very concisely. (Alludes to the small size of a nutshell and the amount that it would hold.) The explanation is long and involved, but let me put it in a nutshell for you. To put it in a nutshell: you are fired!

very briefly The answer, in a nutshell, is no.

something that you say when you are describing something using as few words as possible Karen wants them to get married and buy a house and Mike wants them to carry on as they are and that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Well, to put it in a nutshell, we're going to have to start again.

Concisely, in a few words, as in Here's our proposal-in a nutshell, we want to sell the business to you. This hyperbolic expression alludes to the Roman writer Pliny's description of Homer's Iliad being copied in so tiny a hand that it could fit in a nutshell. For a time it referred to anything compressed, but from the 1500s on it referred mainly to written or spoken words.

In a few words; concisely: Just give me the facts in a nutshell.