gristle

As an advertiser, “you have to get comfortable with the fact that, if you’re buying sausage, there’s going to be a lot of fat and gristle in there,” this executive said.

She was mostly gristle and bone when we saw her, lying in the sun with her legs spread and a grimace on her face.

Savor the perfectly pitched ear required to turn a simple phrase like “a dumpling, some knurled pouch of gristle.”

Bone would prove too unyielding, but cartilage, or gristle, meets the case exactly.