bones

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bone.

   The skeleton in the museum had every one of its bones intact.

   Calcium helps keep your bones strong as you grow older.

   Note

   An ordinary -s plural, but only of the countable meanings. Bone as a material has no plural, so bones are always separate pieces: the parts of a skeleton, the small bones of a fish, the stays that stiffen a corset. The same spelling is also the verb's he/she/it form (she bones a fish), so the sentence around the word tells you which one you have.

2. 2
   nounplural

   The underlying framework or foundation that gives something its shape and support.

   Like the steel skeleton inside a skyscraper, hidden but holding everything up.

   The architect preserved the bones of the historic building during the renovation.

   Beneath the rewritten dialogue, the bones of the original story remained.

   Similarframework, structure, skeleton, foundation

   Note

   Always plural in this use: a building, a plan or a story has bones, never a bone. Its favorite company is good. A house with good bones has a sound structure, whatever its surface looks like. Maren Morris built her 2019 song The Bones on that idea: a house with a sound frame stays standing.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bone.

   He carefully bones the trout, leaving the two fillets whole.

   The butcher bones each cut to order for his customers.

   Note

   The he/she/it form serves every meaning of the verb, from the kitchen to the survey site to the garden. A cook bones a chicken, a surveyor bones a level line, and a gardener bones the soil with bone fertilizer. Be careful when the object is a person, because there the verb is vulgar slang for sex. Its spelling twin is the noun plural.

4. 4
   noun

   A matched pair of dice thrown in games of chance.

   The gambler rattled the bones and let them tumble across the felt.

   One lucky throw of the bones doubled his stake for the night.

   Similardice

5. 5
   nouncolloquial

   A casual greeting in which two people lightly knock their closed fists together.

   Like a handshake reinvented for a more relaxed, modern moment.

   He offered bones to each of his teammates as they left the field.

   A round of bones went around the circle after the win.

6. 6
   noun

   A folk percussion instrument played as a pair in one hand, often made from cattle ribs.

   Like castanets, but held loosely between the fingers and rattled.

   The percussionist rattled the bones against his palm to drive the reel forward.

   An old fiddler accompanied himself with a pair of bones.

   Note

   The name comes from the pieces themselves. Each curved slat held between the fingers is a bone, and the instrument is the two of them rattled together to keep time. That is why the word is always plural, even for a single instrument: players speak of a pair of bones and of playing the bones.

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