boneshaker
Britishnoun
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an early type of bicycle having solid tyres and no springs
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slang any decrepit or rickety vehicle
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.
This we learn when a census officer pops by his breeze-block house – a half-cute, half-clumsy device – just before he hops on his boneshaker for the night shift at the local auto factory.
From The Guardian • May 16, 2013
By the time the old boneshaker finally took to the road, the empty plastic bag and bottle were at his feet, and he was gnawing the last clam off the stick.
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
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True, it was probably the first boneshaker that had ever attacked the gravity of St. Luke's Square.
From The Old Wives' Tale by Bennett, Arnold
They are rude machines, only a slight improvement upon the honored boneshaker; but their introduction is suggestive of what may be looked for in the future.
From Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II From Teheran To Yokohama by Stevens, Thomas
I began to be acutely anxious about the old boneshaker, the more as we seemed a long way short of the village I had proposed to spend the night in.
From Greenmantle by Buchan, John
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.