From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishscratch the surfacescratch the surfacePARTto deal with only a very small part of a subject or problemscratch the surface of I think we have only scratched the surface of this problem. → scratch
Examples from the Corpus
scratch the surface• A lot of titles for this year you may think, but I've only scratched the surface.• The above four cases only scratch the surface.• Mr Burrows added cultivator tines to scratch the surface and provide an adequate tilth for the rapeseed.• The end of the upper branches scratched the surface like phonograph needles.• But Mr Smith has merely scratched the surface of Labour's election promises.• But after a summer in Trinidad, he realized he had only scratched the surface of the eclectic and complex belief system.• So far, we have only scratched the surface of the information available on this topic.• All too soon it was over and we left feeling we had just scratched the surface of this fascinating Republic.• So far, research into psychoneuroimmunology has done no more than scratch the surface of this potentially important topic. 