Word.ws English Dictionary

bone to pick

bone to pick noun: a disagreeable matter to settle with somebody.

Noun

bone to pick (plural bones to pick)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, usually) A disagreeable matter to settle with somebody.
    • "I say, Winthrop," he cried, "I've got a bone to pick with you. You've been hitting me pretty hard in that rag of yours. Do you know what a public man down in the Gulf States does with an editor who attacks him?"1903, Joseph A. Altsheler, chapter 1, in Before the Dawn
    • There are a few plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions in lesser populated areas, but big-city courts had few suits that did not involve medical error and "a legitimate bone to pick."2006 October, Terry Carter, “Tort Reform Texas Style”, in ABA Journal, volume 92, number 10, pages 30–36

Synonyms of bone to pick

Forms of bone to pick

pluralbones to pick

Words formed from bone to pick

Questions about bone to pick

What does bone to pick mean?
Bone to pick means a disagreeable matter to settle with somebody.
What part of speech is bone to pick?
Bone to pick is a noun.
What is the plural of bone to pick?
The plural of bone to pick is bones to pick.

Words near bone to pick in the dictionary

  1. bone spurs
  2. bone structure
  3. bone structures
  4. bone tired
  5. bone tissue
  6. bone to pick
  7. bone turquoise
  8. bone turquoises
  9. bone up
  10. Bone Wars
  11. bone wax

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bone to pick (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.

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