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There is an idiom to cover the waterfront:

to deal with every detail concerning a specific topic

[McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs via TFD]

Could you say thank you for covering the waterfront when someone has finished explaining things?

Also, can you say "we'll cover the waterfront"? for instance, when starting a partnership with a company? I'm intending to say we will help you in every details in setting up your business— "of course, we will cover the waterfront, and support you, etc."

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    Idioms are strange beasts. I'd think that 'Thank you: you've certainly covered the waterfront' sounds more natural. In the second example, I think 'cover all bases ' works better.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Mar 9, 2016 at 22:58
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    I have never heard anybody use this phrase, in any form, in real life. Moreover, I can't even imagine myself using it, unlike say "kick the bucket" or "screw the pooch." Too many syllables, I think.
    – Doug Glancy
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 2:37
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    This is a uncommon idiom, so it may not sound natural, and may confuse non-native speakers. Personally, I'd avoid it for something more natural. I used to say "soup to nuts" before I realized half the people had no idea what I meant.
    – jimm101
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 3:08
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    Unless you are a very skilled non-native English speaker with quasi-native abilities, it is perhaps best to steer clear of unusual expressions. Even as a native speaker, there are tons of images I am not familiar with. But if I hear "That should get the cat out of the well.", I would understand but would not call it "an expression" but rather a way of expressing oneself. :)
    – Lambie
    Commented Feb 7, 2022 at 17:19

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Probably not. The idiom "cover the waterfront" is derived from the title of the 1932 book "I Cover The Waterfront", which was adapted into a movie and inspired a song in the following year. All three have largely passed out of public consciousness nowadays, so the phrase would probably not be understood as intended.

As replacements, consider "covering the bases" for the sense of being all-inclusive, or "filling me in" in the context of thanking someone for an explanation.

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"Cover the waterfront" had significant drift of the signified (or "meaning creep" if you like a less technical term) even in the 30s and 40s.

Newspaper slang in the 20's, when it was confined to the journalism world, meant "I work where I see and write about a little bit of every kind of news", which at the time meant violent crime, vice, smuggling and other mob operations, sea tragedies, labor strikes, war preparations, construction projects, etc etc etc. (See Dix Harwood, Getting and Reporting News, one of the first J-School textbooks)

By extension after the movie it was used to mean "I am responsible for and know something about a wide range of things."

But the song was about someone hanging out where ships come in, hoping for the return of a lover. Then by the late 30s it was beginning to be applied to exhaustive reports and long detailed presentations, and that meaning became more common during WW2 and the Cold War (which ran on long presentations).

But all the meanings continued in use; the Orioles had a big hit with the song, "I cover the waterfront" in its original sense was still occasionally in use at magazines and in some academic disciplines in the 1990s, and of course when you hear it used today it's more commonly in the defense/corporate sense.

That's at least 3 possible meanings for a phrase that may not be familiar at all. I think this is one of those like "decimate", "beg the question", "oil on troubled waters", or "toe the line" that is better avoided in new writing if clarity is your goal.

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I think 'cover the waterfront' is a modern version of 'tour d'horizon'and certainly does not mean a review of all details. It's the opposite - it's a quick review as a starting point. The waterfront is a facade - behind it lies the city, then the country. So it is just a snappy update of all bases allowing someone to then make a judgement about what to do next. It's an overview, boiled down, to get someone up to speed.

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