Word.ws English Dictionary

chavel-bone

chavel-bone noun: jawbone.

Noun

chavel-bone (plural chavel-bones)

  1. (archaic, obsolete) Jawbone.
    • Cain kills Abel with a 'chavel-bone' (jaw bone), as according to apocryphal legend, and then hides his body under a pile of grass or hay.1991, Colette Rausch, Leigh A. Payne, Medieval Drama, page 39
    • It is the cry of Electra […] of Antigone for the father, for the brother struck down by the chavel-bone of Cain, death's storm-trooper, the man of ten-thousand names and ten-thousand faces […]1992, Joan DeVee Dixon, George Rochberg: A Bio-bibliographic Guide to His Life and Works, page 325

Forms of chavel-bone

pluralchavel-bones
alternative formchavel bone

Origin of chavel-bone

From Middle English chavylbone, chavyl bon (also as Middle English chawylbon, chawlbone, chawle boon, jawe bone > Early Modern English chawe bone, chaw-bone, jaw-bone > English jawbone), equivalent to chavel + bone. Doublet of jawbone.

Questions about chavel-bone

What does chavel-bone mean?
Chavel-bone means jawbone.
What part of speech is chavel-bone?
Chavel-bone is a noun.
What is the plural of chavel-bone?
The plural of chavel-bone is chavel-bones.

Words near chavel-bone in the dictionary

  1. Chavarry
  2. Chavasse
  3. chavdom
  4. chave
  5. chavel
  6. chavel-bone
  7. chavel-bones
  8. chavelled
  9. chavelling
  10. chavels
  11. chavender

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chavel-bone (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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