nail down

phrasal verb

nailed down; nailing down; nails down

1

: to make (something, such as a victory) certain to happen

They need to score another touchdown to nail down the victory.

2

: to find out or identify (something) exactly

Her doctors haven't yet been able to nail down a diagnosis.

They're trying to nail down the cause of our network problems.

3

: to make (something) definite or final

nail down a decision

Examples of nail down in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Once the principle is accepted—that ingestion at scale for model training is protected—there’s very little to stop the tech giants from scraping everything that isn’t nailed down. —Aron Solomon june 27, Literary Hub, 27 June 2025

Some of this would be excusable if the show didn’t really try to nail down the details of the sport; Happy Gilmore did not ask you to suspend a whole lot of disbelief — not with a straight face, at least. —Tony Maglio, HollywoodReporter, 25 June 2025

Home Depot, in particular, is a convenient spot for contractors and homeowners in many communities to approach and hire laborers to paint walls, nail down roofing and complete other manual labor projects. —Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Money, 13 June 2025

Jacob Robertson came on with the bases loaded to nail down the save. —Paul Johnson, Chicago Tribune, 6 June 2025

Rhymes for nail down

• adown
• blowdown
• breakdown
• countdown
• crackdown
• crosstown
• downtown
• drawdown
• dropdown
• facedown
• godown
• hometown