Bonehouse
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A body. poetic
"[…] beyond whatever - a comfort to consider those bones - Or run my hand over elastic frail ribcage, the woman I love, her pulse of desire. What store of affection inside the bonehouse? Tilt of the chin, and how her denim skirt falls to her shoes."
- 2 A building for holding the remains of the dead.
- 3 A corpse. poetic
"[…] but the poet, having moved through a landscape that is defined by images of barrenness and desolation — trees "lorn of all delicious apple," an empty house given over to "dust that filmed the deadened air," "the bonehouse of a rabbit," […]"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"[…] beyond whatever - a comfort to consider those bones - Or run my hand over elastic frail ribcage, the woman I love, her pulse of desire. What store of affection inside the bonehouse? Tilt of the chin, and how her denim skirt falls to her shoes."
Etymology
From Old English bānhūs (“the body, the chest, breast”, literally “the bone-house”), equivalent to bone + house.
From bone + house. Compare German Beinhaus (“ossuary”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.