Word.ws English Dictionary

notomy

notomy noun: a skeleton; (also figurative) someone emaciated.

Noun

notomy (plural notomies)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) A skeleton; (also figurative) someone emaciated.
    • They allow me to eat nothing at night but blanchius manſhius, which has made a perfect notomy of me; […]1765, Sheridan, “Letter LXXX. To Mrs. Susanna Neville”, in Jonathan Swift, editor, The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, volume XIII, […] George Faulkner, pages 233-234
    • Dame Dobs, who nurses Miss, told me a wesk agonie she did not know which of the dear souls would go first, for Madam Howard was a mere notomy with fretting.1806, Rachel Hunter, chapter V, in Lady Maclairn, The Victim of Villan, volume I, London: […] W. Earle; J. W. Hucklebridge, page 133
    Synonyms:
    atomy, thin person

Synonyms of notomy

Forms of notomy

pluralnotomies

Origin of notomy

Back-formation from anatomy.

Questions about notomy

What does notomy mean?
Notomy means a skeleton; (also figurative) someone emaciated.
What part of speech is notomy?
Notomy is a noun.
What is the plural of notomy?
The plural of notomy is notomies.

Words near notomy in the dictionary

  1. notohippid
  2. notohippids
  3. notomies
  4. notommatid
  5. notommatids
  6. notomy
  7. notonectid
  8. notonectids
  9. notoph
  10. notophs
  11. notophyll

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: notomy (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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