Marrowbone

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bone containing edible marrow.

    "And thy skull and thy marrow-bones will I have away to Carcë, to my palace, to be a token unto all the world that I have been the bane of an hundredth great champion by my wrastling, and thou not least among them that I have slain in that exercise."

  2. 2
    a bone containing edible marrow; used especially in flavoring soup wordnet
  3. 3
    The shins or knees, chiefly in references to kneeling. humorous, in-plural

    "Upon this condescension, the culprit was called up stairs^([sic]), and made acquainted with the mitigation of his fate; upon which he said, he would down on his marrow-bones to his own master, but would be damn'd before he would ask pardon of e'er a Frenchman in Christendom."

Example

More examples

"And thy skull and thy marrow-bones will I have away to Carcë, to my palace, to be a token unto all the world that I have been the bane of an hundredth great champion by my wrastling, and thou not least among them that I have slain in that exercise."

Etymology

From marrow + bone.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.