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Bone of contention   /boʊn əv kəntˈɛnʃən/   Listen
noun
Bone  n.  
1.
(Anat.) The hard, calcified tissue of the skeleton of vertebrate animals, consisting very largely of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and gelatine; as, blood and bone. Note: Even in the hardest parts of bone there are many minute cavities containing living matter and connected by minute canals, some of which connect with larger canals through which blood vessels ramify.
2.
One of the pieces or parts of an animal skeleton; as, a rib or a thigh bone; a bone of the arm or leg; also, any fragment of bony substance. (pl.) The frame or skeleton of the body.
3.
Anything made of bone, as a bobbin for weaving bone lace.
4.
pl. Two or four pieces of bone held between the fingers and struck together to make a kind of music.
5.
pl. Dice.
6.
Whalebone; hence, a piece of whalebone or of steel for a corset.
7.
Fig.: The framework of anything.
A bone of contention, a subject of contention or dispute.
A bone to pick, something to investigate, or to busy one's self about; a dispute to be settled (with some one).
Bone ash, the residue from calcined bones; used for making cupels, and for cleaning jewelry.
Bone black (Chem.), the black, carbonaceous substance into which bones are converted by calcination in close vessels; called also animal charcoal. It is used as a decolorizing material in filtering sirups, extracts, etc., and as a black pigment. See Ivory black, under Black.
Bone cave, a cave in which are found bones of extinct or recent animals, mingled sometimes with the works and bones of man.
Bone dust, ground or pulverized bones, used as a fertilizer.
Bone earth (Chem.), the earthy residuum after the calcination of bone, consisting chiefly of phosphate of calcium.
Bone lace, a lace made of linen thread, so called because woven with bobbins of bone.
Bone oil, an oil obtained by heating bones (as in the manufacture of bone black), and remarkable for containing the nitrogenous bases, pyridine and quinoline, and their derivatives; also called Dippel's oil.
Bone setter. Same as Bonesetter. See in the Vocabulary.
Bone shark (Zool.), the basking shark.
Bone spavin. See under Spavin.
Bone turquoise, fossil bone or tooth of a delicate blue color, sometimes used as an imitation of true turquoise.
Bone whale (Zool.), a right whale.
To be upon the bones of, to attack. (Obs.)
To make no bones, to make no scruple; not to hesitate. (Low)
To pick a bone with, to quarrel with, as dogs quarrel over a bone; to settle a disagreement. (Colloq.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Bone of contention" Quotes from Famous Books



... woman has governed man from the foundation of the world! [Laughter]. I know that Plato didn't have a good opinion of women; but probably they were not as amiable in his day as in ours. They undoubtedly have wrought their full share of mischief in the world. The chief bone of contention among mankind, from the earliest ages down, has been that rib of Adam out of which God made Eve. [Laughter]. And I believe in holding women to as great a moral accountability as men. [Laughter]. I believe, also, in holding them to the same intellectual accountability. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... there, I'll hate myself," she whispered, when the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost unendurable. "I was a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan know I cared. And I'll hate him too if he makes me a bone of contention. I elected to play the game the only decent way there is to play it. So did he. Why can't he abide ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hostile fleets for some time. On September 14 he touched at Apia, in German Samoa, familiar to readers of Robert Louis Stevenson. It could be remembered how, fifteen years before, this colony, shortly to fall before a New Zealand expeditionary force, had been a bone of contention between Great Britain and Germany. Captain Sturdee, whom von Spee was soon to meet in more arduous operations, had on that occasion commanded the British force in the tribal warfare. Eight days later, on September 22, the two German cruisers arrived off Papeete, in Tahiti, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... movements in her favor, woman, bone of man's bone, remains a bone of contention to him, till nature, read truly and trusted reverently, is allowed to lead him as a little child by the hand and show him woman's real kingdom. He must not look on it with a timid or a grudging eye. A Chinese mandarin in California, becoming acquainted with the fact that American women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and then would frown and become gloomy, as though angry with himself for such outward womanly expression of what he felt. As it was, the words fell upon ears which they delighted not. "Then, my son, you will live to rue the day in which you first saw her," said the elder Jew. "She will be a bone of contention in your way that will separate you from all your friends. You will become neither Jew nor Christian, and will be odious alike to both. And ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... all the bearings of the question, and if they cannot resist effectually these encroachments of the Imperial Government, adopt the remaining alternative of saving themselves from an infliction, by giving up at once and entirely, the bone of contention between us. Thus only shall we disarm, if anything in reason or in nature can, our enemies of their slanderous weapons of offence, and secure in as far as possible, a speedy and safe return of peace and prosperity to the "distracted" colony.—Without this sacrifice on our parts, we ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... means void of importance. One is the union, not common in French books between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, of sentiment and seriousness with something very like humour. Hylas, the not exactly "comic man," but light-o'-love and inconstant shepherd, was rather a bone of contention among critics of the book's own century. But he certainly seasons it well; and there is one almost Shakespearean scene in which he is concerned—a scene which Benedick and Beatrice, who may have read ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... in exactly with the theory taking shape in the detective's mind—that there were two implacable forces at war in New York that night, that Lady Hermione's marriage to Count Vassilan or the Frenchman provided the immediate bone of contention, and that the struggle had been complicated by a too literal interpretation of instructions carried out ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... and others. In Kant's time the subject was a bone of contention between faculties, Kant representing in the quarrel the philosophic, Metzger, Hoffbauer, and Fries,[5] the medical faculties. Later legal psychology was simply absorbed by psychiatry, and thereby completely subsumed among the medical disciplines, in spite of the fact ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... different districts, who gave him much conflicting evidence about the doings of Macri Georgio, but with no result, and the Alligator was finally brought to an anchor at Salonica, where he prosecuted further inquiries. Salonica, which to-day promises to become a bone of contention among some of the Powers of Europe, he found 'a clean town, containing about 70,000 inhabitants. The walls are in the Turkish style of fortification and without a ditch; the city stands on an inclined plain gently sloping ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury


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