Lowdown

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Sensitive or private information that is not easily accessible
2. Information that is private and known only to a select few
3. Details that are secret and shared exclusively within a trusted group

Etymology: The noun "lowdown" meaning secret or inside information is a surprisingly late arrival, first recorded in 1915, and it grew out of an older compound adjective. Its parts are "low," which here carries the sense of humble or base, and "down," which in this sense means the same thing as in "down-to-earth." Put together, they described something low in rank or status. The phrase was recorded in the 1540s in this humble sense, and by 1888 it had shifted to mean vulgar or far down the social scale. The step from "vulgar" to "secret information" is what makes the noun interesting. In early twentieth-century American slang, "the lowdown" came to mean the real, unvarnished facts about something, the details that polite surfaces conceal. The noun is thus a kind of inversion: the base, unglamorous sense of the adjective gave way to the idea of the hidden truth that only insiders get to hear.

Synonyms: information, facts, details, scoop, inside story