[f. BONE sb.]
† 1. intr. ? To throw out spicules of bone. Obs.
1664. in Pepys, Diary (1879), III. 96. [Charm against a thorn] Jesus … Was pricked both with nail and thorn; It neither wealed, nor belled, rankled nor boned.
2. trans. To deprive of the bone; to take out the bones, e.g., from meat, fish, etc.; also fig.
1494. Act 11 Hen. VII., xxiii. Fish … not boned or splatted.
1552. Huloet, Bonen, or plucke oute bones, exosso.
1674. trans. Scheffer’s Lapland, xviii. 92. Having boiled the fish they first bone them.
1853. Soyer, Pantroph., 139. Cook a ham … then bone it.
1880. Ruskin, Deucalion, No. 7. You give it [a book] to a reviewer, first to skin it, and then to bone it, and then to chew it, and then to lick it, and then to give it you down your throat like a handful of pilau.
3. To furnish with bones, as a. to manure with bones; b. to stiffen (stays) with whalebone.
1871. Figure-Training, 49. Having my stays very fully boned and fitted with shoulder-straps.
1873. R. Caldecott in Pall Mall Gaz., 11 June (1886), 4/1. Afine grass field … well boned last winter.
