Debones

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To extract the skeletal structure from flesh, particularly in meat or fish
2. To eliminate the bony parts from a carcass, generally in culinary contexts
3. To carefully take out all bones from meat or fish, making it easier to eat

Etymology: "Debones" is the third-person singular present form of "debone," so it describes the action of removing the bones from a piece of meat or fish. The verb is a straightforward formation: the prefix "de-," borrowed into English from Latin "de-" meaning "away from" or "down from," attached to "bone." The Latin prefix is itself old, traceable back to Proto-Indo-European, and English has long used it to mean reversal or removal, as in "defrost" or "decode." The base word "bone" has a long pedigree in English. It descends from Old English "bān," which passed through Middle English "bon" into the modern spelling. So the verb is simply a native English noun, given a removal sense by a prefix borrowed from Latin. Its meaning follows the logic of the prefix: to take the bone out of the thing it sits in.

Synonyms: fillet, debone