adjective
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resembling or consisting of bone or bones
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having many bones
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having prominent bones
bony cheeks
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thin or emaciated
a bony old woman
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of bony
First recorded in 1350–1400, bony is from the Middle English word boni. See bone, -y 1
Explanation
Someone who's bony is very thin. Your cat may have been plump when he was young, and become bony as he got older. If you're so skinny that your bones are prominent, your friends might call you bony and encourage you to eat more. Another way to use the adjective bony is to mean "like bone" or "containing bone." Some animals have bony shells or protective plates — and you might not enjoy your fish dinner if it's way too bony. Bony shares a root with bone, the Old English ban, "bone or tusk."
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.
See Examples For:
"They're a heavy, bony fish, so it must be some severe ramming," Wellard said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 23, 2026
Fishermen and chefs report that Asian carp are actually delicious, though they are so bony they don’t make good filets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026
The fossils come from a 249 million year old marine community that included extinct reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and sharks.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 30, 2025
The holiday’s corpulent, white-bearded dandy arrived even later, his schmaltzy persona skimmed from bony St. Nicholas between Reconstruction and 1931, when Coca-Cola debuted its iconic, brandy-flushed Santa Claus.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 25, 2025
He was now sixteen and had grown to be almost as tall as my father, but his cheeks were hollow and his clothes hung loosely on his bony frame.
From "The Boy on the Wooden Box" by Leon Leyson
The introductory news release dubbed them simply “Beyond Fried Chicken,” and the accompanying photo depicted the not-nuggets in a paper bucket reminiscent of the receptacles that usually house the chain’s bonier offerings.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 13, 2022
No, really: Unlike bonier fish, Greenland sharks lack distinctive growth rings for researchers to count like those in a tree.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 11, 2016
As modern-day sharks have fully cartilage skeletons, the fossil suggests they evolved from an earlier, bonier fish, transforming to a cartilage skeleton to make them lighter, more nimble and quicker through the water.
From The Guardian ● May 28, 2015
Oedipus' puppet, blinded and bonier than ever, came back in time to disintegrate before the final curtain.
From Time Magazine Archive
It was a good color of nail polish, and Margo had nice fingers, thinner and bonier than the rest of her, which was all curves and soft edges.
From "Paper Towns" by John Green
Any savvy politician knows to grab the boniest chunk of raccoon on the table since it will make for the best photo and have the least amount of meat.
From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2014
“The longest, boniest thing the nurses had ever seen.”
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
He was highly pleased, for decidedly the boniest and most scraggy of the fowls had been selected, and nothing could be more delicious than this stew.
From A Very Naughty Girl by L. T. Meade
Pride of profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest.
From What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain
To-day saw the thinnest, boniest woman imaginable; Mrs. Booysen; just a skeleton; husband Ceylon; daughter here; son and daughter still at the front.
From Woman's Endurance by A. D (August D.) Luckhoff
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.
