Word.ws English Dictionary

bonehouse

bonehouse noun: a body.

Noun (1)

bonehouse (plural bonehouses)

  1. (poetic) A body.
    • […] beyond whatever - a comfort to consider those bones - Or run my hand over elastic frail ribcage, the woman I love, her pulse of desire. What store of affection inside the bonehouse? Tilt of the chin, and how her denim skirt falls to her shoes.1998, Gary Gach, What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop
    • A human body is not a house, says our logical mind. But as soon as we say this, the kenning urges us to consider or puzzle over why, after all, a human body in some special, important way is a house, and why moreover it is a 'bonehouse.'1998, Alvin A. Lee, Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon
  2. (poetic) A corpse.
    • […] but the poet, having moved through a landscape that is defined by images of barrenness and desolation — trees "lorn of all delicious apple," an empty house given over to "dust that filmed the deadened air," "the bonehouse of a rabbit," […]1990, Peter Stitt, Frank Graziano, James Wright: The Heart of the Light

Noun (2)

bonehouse (plural bonehouses)

  1. A building for holding the remains of the dead.
    Synonyms:
    ossuary

Examples of bonehouse in a sentence

  • The skylark is our souls, residing within our bodies (bonehouses).2012, Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry As a Human Being:
  • What comes into your mind when you hear the word bonehouse?2012, David Crystal, The Story of English in 100 Words:

Synonyms of bonehouse

Forms of bonehouse

pluralbonehouses

Origin of bonehouse

From Old English bānhūs (“the body, the chest, breast”, literally “the bone-house”), equivalent to bone + house.

From bone + house. Compare German Beinhaus (“ossuary”).

Questions about bonehouse

What does bonehouse mean?
Bonehouse means a body.
How do you use bonehouse in a sentence?
The skylark is our souls, residing within our bodies (bonehouses).
What part of speech is bonehouse?
Bonehouse is a noun.
What is the plural of bonehouse?
The plural of bonehouse is bonehouses.

Words near bonehouse in the dictionary

  1. boneheaded
  2. boneheadedly
  3. boneheadedness
  4. boneheads
  5. Bonehill
  6. bonehouse
  7. bonehouses
  8. bonejarring
  9. bonejarringly
  10. boneless
  11. boneless lean beef trimmings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bonehouse (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bonehouse.wav.

Cite this entry: “bonehouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bonehouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.