Rigbone

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A dialect word for the backbone or spine running along the back of a person or animal
2. Regional English term denoting the spinal column that forms the central support of the back
3. An old dialect name for the vertebral column, the row of bones along the length of the back

Etymology: Rigbone is an old word for the spine, the chain of vertebrae running down the back. It is built from two Old English elements: "hrycg," meaning "back" or "ridge," and "bān," meaning "bone." The first part is the source of the modern "ridge," which gives the compound a literal sense of "ridge-bone," a bone that forms the back's raised line. The "rig" element has a plain, traceable history. In Old English "hrycg" was a common word for the back of a body and also for the back of an animal, and it reached Middle English as "rigge" with the same sense before narrowing into the word for a raised crest of land. Rigbone appears in English texts from the Middle Ages onward, and it kept its literal sense rather than acquiring a figurative one. The word is now mostly archaic or dialectal. Its survival in some regions reflects how the older compound ran alongside the Latinate "spine" and "vertebral column," which came into English through Old French and Latin respectively.