close to the bone

comparative closer to the bone · superlative closest to the bone

1. usuallyPenetrating and relatable, to the point of causing discomfort.

   First came the plague, then the flood, and now the fire. This has been a biblical summer, one where the doomsday warnings of climate scientists have felt increasingly close to the bone.

   2021 August 6, Gaby Hinsliff, “Johnson’s muddle over Covid is a foretaste of his thinking on climate change.”, in The Guardian

   2 more examples

   The author now brings economics to the personal level, asking and pondering these uneasy, but close-to-the-bone questions: Are we economic people or self-developing persons? Should we look to the proletariat or to all those who love life? Are we suffering from exploitation or from negative symbiosis?

   1977 December 10, Arnold W. Klassen, “Looking For Alternatives: A New Political Analysis”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 23, page 13

   So it’s morally complex and sometimes uncomfortably close to the bone, but also lushly bawdy and funny, and packaged together with an astonishing degree of cinematic brio by first-time writer-director Marielle Heller.

   2015 August 6, Leslie Felperin, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl review – a scaldingly honest coming-of-age comedy”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms: too close for comfort

2. Destitute.

   We've lived close to the bone and saved every cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim now that we can't cash…

   1916, Albert Bigelow Paine, quoting Mark Twain, chapter 53, in The Boys’ Life of Mark Twain

   Synonyms: poor, hard up, almsless, arm, badly off, bankrupt, beggared, beggarly