at the end of the day
- 1When everything has been taken into account; ultimately, what finally matters most.
At the end of the day, the company's survival depends on whether customers keep coming back.
You can debate the details all you want, but at the end of the day, someone has to make the final call.
Note
A phrase that clears away the lesser arguments before the point that counts. In Ebenezer Erskine's sermons (c. 1737–1754) the day can still be read as a final day, when Christ's little flock becomes an innumerable company. In Charles Krauthammer's 1991 essay in Time it simply sets a sideshow aside. It usually opens the sentence, followed by a comma, and the claim after it is the one the speaker means to stand on.
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