Word.ws English Dictionary

meat on the bones

meat on the bones noun: a substantial addition to or augmentation of the content of something, especially something which is unfinished or incomplete.

Noun

meat on the bones (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic, often preceded by put) A substantial addition to or augmentation of the content of something, especially something which is unfinished or incomplete.
    • The Conservatives finally put some meat on the bones of their plans at their annual conference last week.2009 October 11, Ashley Seager, “Has Darling or Osborne the best plan for cutting the deficit”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 12 Jun 2022
    • Co-producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys puts meat on the bones of songs that often feel like little more than drowsily repeated phrases.2014 June 16, Allison Stewart, “Music: 'Ultraviolence' is the set of songs Lana Del Rey was invented to sing”, in Washington Post, retrieved 12 Jun 2022

Synonyms of meat on the bones

Questions about meat on the bones

What does meat on the bones mean?
Meat on the bones means a substantial addition to or augmentation of the content of something, especially something which is unfinished or incomplete.
What part of speech is meat on the bones?
Meat on the bones is a noun.

Words near meat on the bones in the dictionary

  1. meat markets
  2. meat off
  3. meat offering
  4. meat offerings
  5. meat on one's bones
  6. meat on the bones
  7. meat pad
  8. meat pads
  9. meat pie
  10. meat pies
  11. meat puppet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: meat on the bones (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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