mental object vs nitty-gritty

Other hyponyms of mental object include tradition, object, food, food for thought, intellectual nourishment, noumenon, thing-in-itself, universe, universe of discourse, issue, matter, subject, topic, issue, idea, thought, center, centre, core, essence, gist, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, kernel, marrow, meat, nub, pith, substance, sum, wisdom, internal representation, mental representation, representation, belief, kenosis, disbelief, unbelief, heresy, unorthodoxy, end, goal, education, experience, acculturation, culture, lore, traditional knowledge, ignorance, domain, knowledge base, knowledge domain, metaknowledge.