boning

Pluralbonings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The removal of bones from meat or fish; filleting.

   The boning of the lamb shoulder required a sharp, flexible knife.

   Proper boning leaves the fillet intact without tearing the flesh.

   Similarfilleting, deboning

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of bone.

   The chef is boning a whole side of beef.

   Boning the fish quickly keeps the flesh from warming.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb, so the object decides which one is meant: boning a fish, boning a field with bone meal, boning a level line for a trench. The verb also has a vulgar slang meaning. That makes boning someone crude, while boning a chicken is ordinary kitchen talk. As a gerund it slides easily into the nouns that share its spelling and plural, bonings.

3. 3
   nounslangvulgarcountable

   A vulgar slang term for an act of sexual intercourse.

   The movie cut away right before the boning.

   He couldn't stop bragging about last night's boning.

   Similarshag, screw, bonk

   Note

   The vulgar noun behind many unintended jokes in kitchens and dress shops. It is countable: John van de Ruit's Spud – Exit, Pursued by a Bear (2012) has girls "begging for bonings in cars." It belongs to joking talk among friends and is out of place anywhere formal. When you mean meat or corsets, let the context make that plain.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The structure and framework formed by the bones of the body.

   Sculptors study the boning of the face before shaping their clay.

   Her delicate boning was evident in her slender wrists.

   Note

   Breeders use it to size up a frame. A cat breed is praised for "a short, cobby body and heavy boning," and a dog for "substantial boning." Romantic prose turns the same word to fineness, writing of "the delicate boning of her face." It nearly always comes with an adjective of weight or refinement, such as heavy, substantial, delicate or fine.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The arrangement of stiffening strips, originally whalebone, set into a corset to give it shape.

   The dressmaker checked that the boning lay flat against the bodice.

   Steel boning gave the gown its rigid, hourglass silhouette.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The fertilizing of a field by spreading bone meal over the soil.

   Regular boning kept the pasture productive through dry years.

   The estate's ledgers recorded the cost of boning each spring.

   Note

   Farmers counted it by applications. The Farmer's Magazine of 1858 praises "the bonings of the Cheshire farmers" for effects lasting through a lease, and a pasture in 1872 owes its herbage to "repeated bonings." Joan Thirsk's English Peasant Farming sets it beside chalking and turnips among the ways thin soil was transformed. Today it is mainly a word for farming history.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The leveling of ground or a surface, checked by sighting across a set of boning rods.

   The surveyor's boning showed the trench dropped two inches over its length.

   Accurate boning is essential before the foundation is poured.

   Similarleveling

   Note

   A builder's and surveyor's term that can name the result as well as the job. Municipal engineers in 1913 relaid curbs "to bonings," the sighted levels from which all others were taken. The rods themselves, Walmisley noted in 1900, "exactly resemble T squares." Dieter Arnold's Building in Egypt applies the word to pharaonic stone masonry, imagining it done "crosswise over all four corners."

8. 8
   nouncountable

   The placing of a curse by pointing a bone at the victim, practiced in some Aboriginal Australian cultures; an act of pointing the bone.

   After the boning, the man reportedly sickened and died within weeks.

   The accused denied any knowledge of the boning that frightened the camp.

   Similarcurse, hex

   Note

   The noun behind the phrase pointing the bone: one points the bone at a victim, and what follows is the boning, used for both the act and its effect. Its force is the dread it carries. Arthur W. Upfield's The Bone is Pointed speaks of "the inevitability of the boning," and Peter Toohey, writing on melancholy, compares a sufferer's symptoms to those of "a victim of boning."

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