osseous
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- interosseous adjective
- osseously adverb
- postosseous adjective
Etymology
Origin of osseous
1675–85; < Latin osseus bony, equivalent to oss- (stem of os ) bone + -eus -eous
Explanation
Osseous means bony. If your next door neighbor buried their old pet cat in their yard, watch that your dog doesn’t go digging over there, looking for an osseous treat. Osseous comes from the Latin word for bone, oss. You can use osseous to describe things that are literally made of bone, like the osseous structure of your skeleton. You can also use osseous to describe things that have hardened like bones. You might find an osseous piece of taffy in your coat pocket, left there last summer. In that case you could say the taffy ossified.
Vocabulary lists containing osseous
100 SAT words Beginning with "O"
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Body Language: Os, Osteo ("Bone")
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
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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.
Bone, or osseous tissue, is a connective tissue that constitutes the endoskeleton.
From Textbooks • Jun. 9, 2022
“And so I began the poem, ‘Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower,’” she told the AP.
From Washington Times • May 6, 2020
It may be rather obvious by now that I'm rather besotted with all things osseous.
From BBC • Feb. 18, 2014
A bone grows in length when osseous tissue is added to the diaphysis.
From Textbooks • Jun. 19, 2013
The Coxo-femoral Articulation.—The head of the femur is received in the cotyloid cavity; these are the osseous surfaces in contact in this articulation.
From Artistic Anatomy of Animals by Cuyer, ?douard
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.
