rough and ready
adj1
Idiomatic Crude or unpolished, but still fit for use; good enough.
- [A] dozen Americans could, at any time, construct a house, the ‘rough and ready’ habits of the people usually teaching them, in a rude way, a good deal of a great many other arts, besides this of the carpenter.1849, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 15, in The Sea Lions:
- There was a rough and ready rule-of-thumb test of truth[…]1873–1884 (date written), Samuel Butler, chapter LXV, in R[ichard] A[lexander] Streatfeild, editor, The Way of All Flesh, London: Grant Richards, published 1903, →OCLC, page 291:
3 more examples
- The wooden jetty on the East Pier had become worm-eaten and was demolished, but the Admiralty lent an old hulk to serve as a rough-and-ready packet facility.1960 May 23, K. A. Murray, “Carlisle Pier, Dun Laoghaire”, in Railway Magazine, page 302:
- "Things were a lot more rough and ready, but there was a kind of raw beauty about it."1996 December 4, Roderick Conway Morris, “10 Years of Enlightenment: An Unusual Orchestra Celebrates”, in New York Times, retrieved 04 Jun 2014:
- Doctors define overweight and obesity by a rough-and-ready measurement called the body mass index (BMI).2004 November 8, Michael D. Lemonick, Bryan Walsh, “How We Grew So Big”, in Time, retrieved 04 Jun 2014:
- Related terms
- cheap and cheerful, diamond in the rough, quick-and-dirty, rough around the edges