bone1
/bəʊn
/noun
1Any of the pieces of hard whitish tissue making up the skeleton in humans and other vertebrates: his injuries included many broken bones a shoulder bone...
- Direct injury to the spine may cause a bone fracture anywhere along your vertebral column.
- Years ago we realized that if we combined all our accidents, there was hardly a bone in the human skeleton we hadn't broken.
- Bone marrow is a spongy tissue inside certain bones of the body that produces blood cells.
1.1 (one's bones) One’s body: he hauled his tired bones upright...
- Sighing, he pulled his weary bones to their feet and decided coffee was the best option.
- He lowered his aching bones to the floor after a harder day's work than he'd ever done.
- I dragged my tired bones to the bathroom to shave.
1.2 (bones) A corpse or skeleton: the diggers turned up the bones of a fifteen-year-old girl...
- Just ahead, in the wider section of the pass, the dried bones and carcasses of men and pack animals lay strewn about.
- We are still unburying the bones, the remains, of the people who got killed.
- In centuries past, graves would be exhumed, and any bones remaining would be collected and buried deeper down, thereby allowing fresh graves on top.
1.3A bone of an animal with meat on it fed to a dog: dogs yelping over a bone...
- What they actually think happened is that some animal had the bone in his or her burrow and just now decided to toss it.
- So, I've already had to add more water to re-thin it to properly boil down the bones and meat.
- We first put about 5,697 pots of different cereals, lentils, meats, bones and spices on different pots to warm.
The substance of bones is formed by specialized cells (osteoblasts) which secrete around themselves a material containing calcium salts (which provide hardness and strength in compression) and collagen fibres (which provide tensile strength).
2 [mass noun] The calcified material of which bones consist: an earring of bone...
- The material would be gradually replaced by healthy, newly grown bone and blood vessels.
- My latest cut-down bone handled table knives have a near quadrant at the tip and cut unbelievably.
- The spongy bone material was then used for DNA extraction.
2.1A substance similar to bone, such as ivory or whalebone.Mining activity has been a constant source of bone and ivory artifacts over the last several decades....
- What's more, treasured wood was decorated with bone, jade, gold, bronze and shells adding to the value.
- The earliest example of European poetry about a stranded whale is an Anglo-Saxon inscription on a whale bone casket of about 700 AD.
2.2 (often bones) A thing made or formerly made of bone, such as a strip of stiffening for a foundation garment.Farthingales sells corset supplies including bone casing tape for corset bones....
- The quality of the needlework, particularly around the bodice's bone inserts, makes this unlikely.
2.3 (usually bones) (In southern Africa) one of a set of carved dice or bones used by traditional healers in divination.Traditionally Shamans threw the bones into the air or on the ground and observed how the bones landed and what configurations they formed after landing....
- No one is certain when or how bones came to be used to divine the future, cast spells, or influence the outcome of events.
3 (bones) The basic or essential framework of something: you need to put some flesh on the bones of your idea...
- It is a basic bare bones work on the battle of Chattanooga.
- The bill sets out only the very bare bones of the framework on which the criteria for the process will be hung.
- That's the basic bones of the argument, and there's lots of detail in and around it.
verb
1 [with object] Remove the bones from (meat or fish) before cooking, serving, or selling: ask your butcher to bone the turkey for you...
- The school's culinary dean recalls being hung from a meat hook for improperly boning veal during one of his 14-hour days as an apprentice in 1949 Germany.
- Clean and bone the fish, leaving their heads in place.
- Unless you are a dab-hand with the boning knife, ask the butcher to bone the chicken legs for you.
2 [no object] (bone up on) informal Study (a subject) intensively, typically in preparation for something: she boned up on languages she had learned long ago...
- There's nothing like a stroll immediately before an interview for a spot of last minute boning up on your subject.
- To bone up on the subject, he read the works of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose area of research was deceptive political advertising.
- Unless you're willing to bone up on the subject, you're better off to assess his technical ability by asking for references and checking them out.
3 [with object] US vulgar slang (Of a man) have sexual intercourse with (someone).
Phrases
bone of contention
close to (or near) the bone
cut (or pare) something to the bone
have a bone to pick with someone
in one's bones
make no bones about
make old bones
not have a —— bone in one's body
off (or on) the bone
on the bones of one's arse
point the bone at
throw someone a bone
to the bone
to one's bones (or to the bone)
what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh (or blood)
work one's fingers to the bone
Origin
Old English bān, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch been and German Bein.
This Old English word gives us the phrase bone idle which arose in the early 19th century implying idle through to the bone. Bonfire (Late Middle English) was originally a bone fire, on which people burned animal bones. People would collect old animal bones through the year to make a big fire for annual celebrations.
Rhymes
Bône2
/bəʊn/ Former name for Annaba.