bone-grubber
bone-grubber noun: a person who scavenges for waste materials such as bones and rags to sell.
Noun
bone-grubber (plural bone-grubbers)
- A person who scavenges for waste materials such as bones and rags to sell.
- More than half of our modern scribes, and particularly the dramatic portion of them, are little better than literary bone-grubbers, pickers and stealers of unconsidered trifles,—men who, having no brains, live by spinning the brains of others, and give themselves credt for originality.1842, William Collier, “A Chapter on Beards”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, Volume 11, January-June 1842, p. 575
- The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly searches are rags and bones—rags he prefers—but waste metal, such as bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes...1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, page 139
- Synonyms:
- bone-picker, rag-and-bone man
Examples of bone-grubber in a sentence
- The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible.1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, page 139:
- In Paris the chiffoniers or bone-grubbers eat them.1875 February, James Mackintosh, “All About Rats”, in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine, volume 41, number 2, page 183:
- As you know, he was a bone-grubber; the only property he left me was a hooked stick, a bag, and a horse’s skeleton.1880, W. T. Washburn, chapter 47, in The Unknown City: A Story of New York, New York: Jesse Haney & Co, page 351:
Synonyms of bone-grubber
Forms of bone-grubber
| plural | bone-grubbers |
|---|
Questions about bone-grubber
- What does bone-grubber mean?
- Bone-grubber means a person who scavenges for waste materials such as bones and rags to sell.
- How do you use bone-grubber in a sentence?
- The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible.
- What part of speech is bone-grubber?
- Bone-grubber is a noun.
- What is the plural of bone-grubber?
- The plural of bone-grubber is bone-grubbers.
Words near bone-grubber in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bone-grubber (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “bone-grubber.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bone-grubber. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.