boned

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bone.

   The chef boned the salmon fillet with a thin, flexible knife.

   Once the meat had been boned, the cook tied it into a neat roll.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty: the chef boned the fish, and the fish has been boned. Kitchen uses dominate, but the verb also covers fertilizing with bone, putting whalebone into a garment, and surveying a level line. Watch for its vulgar slang meaning of having sex, which can creep into a careless sentence. The participle also stands alone as the "bones removed" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having had the bones removed before being cooked.

   The recipe calls for a boned shoulder of lamb, rolled and tied.

   He prefers boned trout, since the fillets are ready to fry.

   Similardeboned, boneless

   Oppositeunboned

   Note

   A kitchen paradox: boned and deboned mean the same thing, and both match boneless. The opposite is unboned, meat with its bones left in. Meanwhile the dressmaking sense runs the other way, meaning bones put in rather than taken out. Context settles it: a boned shoulder of lamb has lost its bones, while a boned corset has gained some.

3. 3
   adjectivein compounds

   Having bones of a specified type or size, as indicated by a modifying word.

   Greyhounds are lightly boned, which helps them run fast.

   The wrestler was heavily boned and broad across the shoulders.

   Similarbuilt, framed

   Note

   Usually the second half of a compound: hollow-boned, thick-boned, heavily boned. The first element does the describing, and the compound is hyphenated before a noun. Nettie Palmer, writing in The Australian Woman's Mirror in 1925, lets it stand alone. Noses, she says, are boned "at least half-way down," meaning simply that bone runs inside them.

4. 4
   adjectiveslang

   Caught in a bad situation that seems hard or impossible to escape, and facing imminent danger or failure.

   Like a chess player who sees checkmate coming and has no move left to make.

   Once the deadline passed with the report unfinished, the whole team was boned.

   If the engine fails this far from shore, we're completely boned.

   Similarscrewed, fucked

   Note

   Its company tells you its register: screwed, fucked, up shit's creek. It is blunt slang, used after be (we're boned), and it sits close to the vulgar verb behind the past-tense form, so keep it out of formal settings. Ken Keeler's Futurama episode "Godfellas" (2002) has Bender lament "O cruel fate, to be thusly boned" before twisting Donne's bell into "it bones for thee."

5. 5
   adjectiveslang

   Broken to the point of being unusable; no longer functioning.

   The laptop's screen is boned, so I can't see anything on it.

   After the crash, the gearbox was totally boned.

   Similarbroken, busted, wrecked, dead, kaput

   Oppositeworking, functional

   Note

   The same slang, aimed at objects rather than people. The "doomed" sense describes someone's predicament, while this one describes the state of a thing: a screen, a gearbox, a laptop. It is casual talk, fine among friends and out of place in a repair report.

6. 6
   adjective

   Fitted with stiff strips, originally whalebone, sewn in to hold a garment's shape.

   The seamstress made a fully boned corset for the period drama.

   The bodice is boned along every seam to keep its rigid shape.

   Note

   A dressmaker's word, tied to the corset and the basque. The bones were historically whalebone, later steel or plastic, and the strips themselves are still called bones whatever they are made of. Fully boned is the usual intensifier, marking a garment stiffened along every seam rather than at a few points.

7. 7
   adjective

   Of computer-generated animation: built on a digital model whose movement is driven by a framework of simulated bones and joints.

   The animation team delivered a fully boned character ready for posing.

   Once the mesh is boned, the rig can bend at every joint.

   Similarrigged

   Note

   Animation borrows anatomy here. The skeleton is an articulated hierarchy of joints bound to the surface mesh, so moving a bone moves the skin over it. The adjective describes the model once that binding is done, which is why it pairs naturally with fully and sits beside rigged in a studio's working vocabulary.

8. 8
   adjective

   Of a snowboarding or skating trick: performed with one or both legs held straight during the move.

   The rider stuck a perfectly boned method over the big kicker.

   Judges rewarded the trick because the legs were so cleanly boned.

   Note

   Snowboarders prize the straightened leg as style, a way of exaggerating a trick's shape in the air. The word often travels with out. Charlie Berens and DudeDad's sketch The 5 People on the Ski Slopes (2021) has a rider admit, "Bro, for sure you were all boned out." The phrase is slope-side talk, praise among riders.

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