sawbones
Americannoun
plural
sawbones, sawbonesesnoun
Etymology
Origin of sawbones
First recorded in 1830–40; saw 1 + bone + -s 3 ( def. )
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.
“Put the sawbones like me out of business.”
From The New Yorker • Aug. 20, 2012
Amid such scenes, sawbones of 16 nations got together last week for their first international meeting since before the war.
From Time Magazine Archive
Robert Morley and Alastair Sim bear small resemblance to the characters Shaw had in mind, but in company with John Robinson and Felix Aylmer they make a ludicrously Aristophanic chorus of sawbones.
From Time Magazine Archive
What pricked him on from apprenticeship under a toping village sawbones to postgraduate work at the State of Winnemac's great Sears-Roebuckian university was an itching to learn, to know, to do.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the stalwart, officious man in blue is ever on the scene, and the thrashing of a puny cleric or sawbones is scarcely compensation for a month's hard labour.
From Byways of Ghost-Land by O'Donnell, Elliott
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.
