bone - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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”).

Cognate with Scots bane, been, bean, bein, bain (“bone”), North Frisian bian, Biin, biinj (“bone; leg”), West Frisian bien (“bone”), Dutch been (“bone; leg”), German Low German Been, Bein (“bone”), German Bein (“leg”), German Gebein (“bones”), Swedish ben (“bone; leg”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Icelandic bein (“bone; leg”), Breton benañ (“to cut, hew”), Latin perfinēs (“break through, break into pieces, shatter”), Avestan 𐬠𐬫𐬈𐬥𐬙𐬈 (byente, “they fight, hit”). Related also to Old Norse beinn (“straight, right, favourable, advantageous, convenient, friendly, fair, keen”) (whence Middle English bain, bayne, bayn, beyn (“direct, prompt”), Scots bein, bien (“in good condition, pleasant, well-to-do, cosy, well-stocked, pleasant, keen”)), Icelandic beinn (“straight, direct, hospitable”), Norwegian bein (“straight, direct, easy to deal with”). See bain, bein.

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Details needed on where the "dollar" sense comes into this. Is that from gambling slang?”)

A bone.

bone (countable and uncountable, plural bones)

  1. (uncountable) A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates.
    • a1420, The British Museum Additional MS, 12,056, “Wounds complicated by the Dislocation of a Bone”, in Robert von Fleischhacker, editor, Lanfranc's "Science of cirurgie."‎[1], London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, translation of original by Lanfranc of Milan, published 1894, →ISBN, page 63:
      Ne take noon hede to brynge togidere þe parties of þe boon þat is to-broken or dislocate, til viij. daies ben goon in þe wyntir, & v. in þe somer; for þanne it schal make quytture, and be sikir from swellynge; & þanne brynge togidere þe brynkis eiþer þe disiuncture after þe techynge þat schal be seid in þe chapitle of algebra.
  2. (countable) Any of the components of an endoskeleton, made of this material.
  3. A bone of a fish; a fishbone.
  4. A bonefish.
    • 2019, Scott Sadil, “Tres Bocas”, in California Fly Fisher:
      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.
  5. One of the rigid parts of a corset that forms its frame, the boning, originally made of whalebone.
  6. One of the fragments of bone held between the fingers of the hand and rattled together to keep time to music.
  7. Anything made of bone, such as a bobbin for weaving bone lace.
  8. (figurative) The framework of anything.(Should we delete(+) this sense?)
  9. An off-white colour, like the typical colour of bone.
    bone:
  10. (US, informal, in the plural) A dollar.
  11. (American football, informal) The wishbone formation.
  12. (slang) An erect penis; a boner.
  13. (slang, chiefly in the plural) A domino or die.
    Let's head to the casino and roll them bones!
  1. (slang) A cannabis cigarette; a joint.
  1. (figurative) A reward.

bone (not comparable)

  1. Of an off-white colour, like the colour of bone.

bone (third-person singular simple present bones, present participle boning, simple past and past participle boned)

  1. To prepare (meat, etc) by removing the bone or bones from.
    Synonyms: debone, unbone
    Coordinate terms: gut, skin
    • 1949, Kenneth Lewis Roberts, I Wanted to Write‎[2], page 44:
      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.
    • 1977, Prosper Montagné, Charlotte Snyder Turgeon, The New Larousse Gastronomique‎[3], page 73:
      The ballottine is made of a piece of meat, fowl, game or fish which is boned, stuffed, and rolled into the shape of a bundle. The term ballottine should strictly apply only to meat, boned and rolled, but not stuffed.
    • 2009, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food‎[4], page 379:
      Then it is boned; keeping the bone in during cooking improves the flavour and enriches the meat with calcium.
    • 2011, Aliza Green, Steve Legato, The Fishmonger's Apprentice‎[5], page 38:
      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.
  2. To fertilize with bone.
    • 1859 July 9, The Economist‎[6], page 758:
      He cites an instance of land heavily boned 70 years ago as “still markedly luxuriant beyond any other grass land in the same district.”
  3. To put whalebone into.
    • 1871, Figure-Training:
      Having my stays very fully boned and fitted with shoulder-straps.
  4. (civil engineering) To make level, using a particular procedure; to survey a level line.
  5. (vulgar, slang, usually of a man, ambitransitive) To have sexual intercourse (with).
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:copulate, Thesaurus:copulate with
    Related terms: boned, boner
    • 1894, Catullus, translated by Leonard C. Smithers, The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus, section 58:
      O Memmius, well and slowly did you bone me, supine, day by day, with the whole of that beam.
    • 1993, “Back Seat (of My Jeep)”, in 14 Shots to the Dome, performed by LL Cool J:
      We’re bonin’ on the dark blocks / Wearin’ out the shocks, wettin’ up the dashboard clock
    • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 153:
      We were sitting in the student union between classes, and I had just been trying to decide which one of them I was gonna bone first that night.
    • 2006, “Sick of it all”, in Masta Ace (lyrics), Pariah:
      […] These cats stay rapping about cars they don't own / I am sick of rappers bragging about models they don't bone
    • 2007, Stacey Deddo, The Elimination Special, Part II: The Elimination (Drawn Together), season 3, episode 14, spoken by The Jew Producer (James Arnold Taylor), via Comedy Central:
      When we return we'll find out which one of our six remaining contestants' dreams will be totally ruined, like your mom's reputation after I bone her face.
    • 2007, Reno Mounties (Reno 911!), season 4, episode 11, spoken by Deputy Cherisha Kimball (Mary Birdsong), via Comedy Central:
      I swear on the good book that if you pull through, I will bone Travis Junior.
    • 2012, Gavin McInnes, The Death of Cool: From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 89:
      I'd been boning French chicks for a while now and was always shocked to see how many able-bodied young white women had no qualms about being on welfare.
  6. (Australia, dated, in Aboriginal culture) To perform “bone pointing”, a ritual that is intended to bring illness or even death to the victim.
    • 1962, Arthur Upfield, The Will of the Tribe, Collier Books, page 48:
      “You don’t know!”, Bony echoed. “You can tell me who boned me fifteen years ago on the other side of the world, and you can’t tell me who killed the white-fella in the Crater”.
  7. (usually with "up") To study.
    • 1896, Burt L. Standish, Frank Merriwell's Chums:
      “I know it. You do not study.” “What’s the use of boning all the time! I wasn’t cut out for it.”
  8. To polish boots to a shiny finish.
    • c. 1980, F. van Zy, SADF National Service (1979-1980)‎[7], archived from the original on 22 June 2004:
      […] the permanent boning (excessive polishing) of boots by recruits […]
  9. To nag, especially for an unpaid debt.
    • 1950, Asphalt Jungle:
      Dix Handley: Don’t bone me!
      Cobby: Now look, I’m not boning you, Dix—
      Dix: Did I ever welsh?
      Cobby: Nobody said you did—
      Dix: You just boned me!

to remove bones

slang: have sexual intercourse with

to study

bone (not comparable)

  1. Used before an adjective as an intensifier
    • 1979 December 22, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 2, number 22, page 18:
      GWF, well almost anyway, 40, bone-lonely, desperately needs a friend in Southern Maine.

Unknown; probably related in some way to Etymology 1, above.

bone (third-person singular simple present bones, present participle boning, simple past and past participle boned)

  1. (transitive, slang) To apprehend, steal.
    • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby‎[8], page 127:
      “Did I?” said Squeers, “Well it was rather a startling thing for a stranger to come and recommend himself by saying that he knew all about you, and what your name was, and why you were living so quiet here, and what you had boned, and who you had boned it from.”
    • 1915, William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay:
      […] as long as you and I live I take it for granted that you will not suspect me of boning them. But to guard against casualties hereafter, I have asked Nicolay to write you a line saying that I have never had in my possession or custody any of the papers which you entrusted to him.
    • 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Root of the Boot”, in Songs for the Philologists:
      But troll's old seat is much the same,
      And the bone he boned from its owner
    • 1942, Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Canongate, published 2006, page 802:
      Therefore she wants to take results that belong to other people: she wants to bone everybody else's loaf.

Borrowed from French bornoyer (“to look at with one eye, to sight”), from borgne (“one-eyed”).

bone (third-person singular simple present bones, present participle boning, simple past and past participle boned)

  1. (carpentry, masonry, surveying) To sight along an object or set of objects to check whether they are level or in line.[1]
    • 1846, W. M. Buchanan, A Technological Dictionary‎[9], page 151:
      Joiners, &c., bone their work with two straight edges.

Clipping of trombone.

bone (plural bones)

  1. (slang) Clipping of trombone.

  2. ^ Edward H[enry] Knight (1877), “Bone”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary. […], volumes I (A–GAS), New York, N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton […], →OCLC.

bone

  1. plural of boon

From Low German and Middle Low German bōnen, from Old Saxon *bōnian, from Proto-West Germanic *bōnijan (“to polish”).

bone (imperative bon, infinitive at bone, present tense boner, past tense bonede, perfect tense har bonet)

  1. to polish

Derived from the noun bon (“receipt”), from French bon (“voucher, ticket”).

bone (imperative bon, infinitive at bone, present tense boner, past tense bonede, perfect tense har bonet)

  1. to enter (in the cash register)
  2. to charge

From bona (“good”) +‎ -e.

bone

  1. well

bone

  1. good, OK, all right, very well
    Synonyms: en ordo, enorde, okej

Borrowed from Sukuma βũne (“four (class XIV)”).

bone m (masc. plural bunibii, fem. boneko, fem. plural bonebee)

  1. four

From Esperanto bone (“well”), bona (“good”) +‎ -e.

bone

  1. well
    • 2008, Margrit Kennedy, Pekunio sen interesti ed inflaciono, tr. by Alfred Neussner of Interest and Inflation Free Money, page 50:
      To pruvas maxim bone nia bonstando, se ica sumo distributesus nur proxime pro-porcionale.
      This would have served well as a proof of our prosperity if it were evenly distributed. (Original English, page 29)

bone f

  1. plural of bona

bone

  1. feminine plural of bono

bone

  1. vocative masculine singular of bonus

bone

  1. sand

From Old Dutch *bōna, from Proto-West Germanic *baunu.

bône f

  1. bean

Weak feminine noun

| | singular | plural | | | ----------- | ----------- | ----- | | nominative | bône | bônen | | accusative | bône | bônen | | genitive | bône, bônen | bônen | | dative | bône, bônen | bônen |

bone

  1. (West Midland) alternative form of bane

bone

  1. alternative form of bon

bone

  1. alternative form of boon

bone

  1. alternative form of boon

bone

  1. alternative form of boun

Inherited from Old High German bōna.

bōne f

  1. bean

bone f pl

  1. feminine plural of buono

bone

  1. inflection of botnit:
    1. present indicative connegative
    2. second-person singular imperative
    3. imperative connegative

bone

  1. nominative feminine singular of bon
  2. oblique feminine singular of bon

Bir yüzme yarışı sırasında sporcunun taktığı bone.

From French bonnet.

bone (definite accusative boneyi, plural boneler)

  1. (kıyafetler) bathing cap, swim cap, swimming cap.
    Yüzücünün yarışta taktığı bone çıktı.
    The swimming cap that the swimmer wore during the race came off.

bone

  1. feminine plural of bon