Bare Bones
People talk about getting down to the bare bones of a thing, but they also talk about cutting straight to the heart of a matter, or getting to the meat of an issue. These are the sorts of figures of speech that Booth usually has to explain to me, and really, can't you see why? They are so contradictory, bones and meat and heart all being used to idiomatically mean essence, when they are so vastly different.
There aren't any figures of speech in which the brain is the essence of a person. The ancient Egyptians believed the mind was in the cardiac muscle. Brains were nothing; they were removed and discarded before mummification. Am I so different, that I use my brain over my heart?
Bones I understand, bones are the essence of a person in the realistic sense as well as the idiomatic. Bones can tell me the story of people's lives. Meat is problematic; it tells me nothing, even when it is literal meat on literal bones. Hearts I don't understand at all, particularly in the figurative sense.
I don't even understand my own.