bone
//bəʊn//
Forms
- Plural
- bones
- present (v1)
- bone
- past (v2)
- boned
- past participle (v3)
- boned
- present participle
- boning
- 3rd person singular
- bones
Definitions
1.A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates.
2.Any of the components of an endoskeleton, made of this material.
- No Trophee, Sword, nor Hatchment o're his bones.
3.A bonefish.
- The reason I rarely fish for Mag Bay bones with a 5-weight or 6-weight is the number of fish that can turn light stuff inside out.
4.A bone of a fish; a fishbone.
1.To put whalebone into.
- Having my stays very fully boned and fitted with shoulder-straps.
2.To prepare (meat, etc) by removing the bone or bones from.
- Then it is boned; keeping the bone in during cooking improves the flavour and enriches the meat with calcium.
- Other fish suited to boning through the back include small bluefish, Arctic char, steelhead salmon, salmon, small wild striped bass, hybrid striped bass, Whitefish, drum, trout, and sea trout.
- One of the fish stalls specialized in boning shad, and he who has never eaten a boned shad baked twenty minutes on a hot oak plank has been deprived of the most delicious morsel that the ocean yields.
3.To fertilize with bone.
- He cites an instance of land heavily boned 70 years ago as “still markedly luxuriant beyond any other grass land in the same district.”
1.Of an off-white colour, like the colour of bone.
Frequency
Overall
Common· #1684
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Uncommon
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Etymology
From Middle English bon, from Old English bān (“bone, tusk; the bone of a limb”), from Proto-Germanic *bainą (“bone”), from *bainaz (“straight”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyh₂- (“to hit, strike, beat”).