sb. pl. [CROSS- 4 c.] A figure of two thigh-bones laid across each other in the form of the letter X, usually placed under the figure of a skull, as an emblem of death.
1798. Canning, etc. Anti-Jacobin, Rovers. A subterranean vault … with coffins, ’scutcheons, death’s heads and cross-bones.
1826. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. II. (1863), 898. She was a perpetual memento mori; a skull and cross-bones would hardly have been more efficacious.
1885. J. Runciman, Skippers & Shellbacks, 86. Half a score more of us had been under the crossbones [i.e., pirate’s flag].
