bone-crushing
Americanadjective
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powerful or constricting enough to crush one's bones.
a bone-crushing handshake.
-
extremely painful, troublesome, costly, etc..
a bone-crushing mortgage.
Etymology
Origin of bone-crushing
First recorded in 1670–80
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Its long, shallow skull indicates it lacked the bone-crushing bite strength of T. rex.
From Science Daily • Oct. 24, 2025
Based on fossilized poop and gnawed bones, researchers know adults used their bone-crushing teeth to eat large plant-eating dinos the size of an African elephant, such as Triceratops and duck-billed dinosaurs.
From Science Magazine • Dec. 7, 2023
Osmolyte concentrations increase at greater depths to ensure that fish cells don’t shrink too much at such bone-crushing pressures, but these compounds reach their maximum concentration at around 8,400 meters.
From Scientific American • Apr. 7, 2023
Instead of bus-size behemoths, these fish were closer to Volkswagen Beetles, but still bugs that could deliver bone-crushing bites.
From New York Times • Mar. 4, 2023
She rushes forward and pulls me in a bone-crushing hug.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
