Word.ws English Dictionary

bone up

bone up verb: to study or cram, especially in order to refresh one's knowledge of a topic.

Verb

bone up (third-person singular simple present bones up, present participle boning up, simple past and past participle boned up)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To study or cram, especially in order to refresh one's knowledge of a topic.
    • Information acquired in that way, makes an impression ; this "boning" up for an examination is all right as a finishing touch, but it will not last.1913, William Christian Schmeisser, Are You Going To College?, page 132
    • Here's your chance to bone up on the segregating, or crediting, or whatever you call it.1914, Kathleen Norris, chapter 2, in Saturday's Child

Synonyms of bone up

Forms of bone up

third-person singular presentbones up
present participleboning up
past participleboned up
pastboned up

Questions about bone up

What does bone up mean?
Bone up means to study or cram, especially in order to refresh one's knowledge of a topic.
What part of speech is bone up?
Bone up is a verb.
What is the past tense of bone up?
The past tense of bone up is boned up.

Words near bone up in the dictionary

  1. bone tired
  2. bone tissue
  3. bone to pick
  4. bone turquoise
  5. bone turquoises
  6. bone up
  7. Bone Wars
  8. bone wax
  9. bone-ash
  10. bone-cage
  11. bone-cages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bone up (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-bone up.ogg.

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