skeletonize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to reduce to a skeleton, outline, or framework.
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to reduce in size or number, as a military unit.
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to construct in outline.
verb
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to reduce to a minimum framework, number, or outline
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to create the essential framework of
Other Word Forms
- skeletonization noun
- skeletonizer noun
Etymology
Origin of skeletonize
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.
It will skeletonize the leaves of plants and eat flowers such as roses.
From Seattle Times
The forensic-anthropology center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a similar policy, although it will occasionally “skeletonize” remains for institutions with which it has a relationship, like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
From The New Yorker
Rarely do watch manufacturers skeletonize a sports watch’s mechanism.
From Forbes
It was the domain of the lab’s most prodigious workers: a colony of dermestids, flesh-eating beetles that are deployed to “skeletonize” bird and mammal carcasses, so the bones can be examined as evidence or added to the lab’s standards collection.
From New York Times
By the time I’m done with a book, most of my review of it is scrawled in the back pages, and, when I run out of space, on the front matter, curving around the colophon or the note on the type like a swarm of army ants on their way to skeletonize a baby deer.
From Time
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.
