iron out the wrinkles

🌎Region: International 📊Difficulty Level:intermediate

💡Meaning

To resolve small problems or difficulties and make a plan, process, or arrangement work smoothly.

🕰️Origin

From the literal act of ironing fabric to remove wrinkles; used metaphorically from the early 20th century for smoothing out difficulties or imperfections in plans and systems.

📝Notes

Suggests smoothing minor issues rather than fixing a major crisis. Common in business/project contexts; neutral tone.

💬Examples

Before we launch the app, we need another week to iron out the wrinkles.
The two teams met on Friday to iron out the wrinkles in the contract.
Let’s do a quick rehearsal to iron out the wrinkles in the presentation.
The new schedule is working, but we’re still ironing out a few wrinkles.
We’ve agreed on the main terms; now we just have to iron out the wrinkles.

📘Grammar & Usage Notes

Usually used as a verb phrase: "iron out the wrinkles" or "iron out the wrinkles in + noun" (plan/process). Can be inflected (ironed/ironing). Often with "need to" or "try to."

🔗Synonyms

smooth things over
work out the kinks
sort out the details
resolve minor issues
fine-tune

↔️Antonyms

complicate matters
create problems