Word.ws English Dictionary

ruel-bone

ruel-bone noun: a piece of ivory, generally from a marine mammal.

Noun

ruel-bone (plural ruel-bones)

  1. (archaic, literary) A piece of ivory, generally from a marine mammal.
    • RUEL-BONE Is mentioned by Chaucer, and in the following passage, as the material of a saddle. It is not, of course, to be thence supposed that ruel-bone was commonly or even actually used for that purpose,[…]1850, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, page 697
    • White it glimmered, and the sea shimmered
      with star-mirrors in a silver net;
      cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone
      in the moon-foam were gleaming wet.1962, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Sea-Bell

Forms of ruel-bone

pluralruel-bones

Origin of ruel-bone

Learned borrowing from Middle English rewell bon, ruel bon (“walrus ivory”), from Old French roal, rohal (“walrus ivory”), ultimately from Old Norse hrosshvalr (“walrus”).

Questions about ruel-bone

What does ruel-bone mean?
Ruel-bone means a piece of ivory, generally from a marine mammal.
What part of speech is ruel-bone?
Ruel-bone is a noun.
What is the plural of ruel-bone?
The plural of ruel-bone is ruel-bones.

Words near ruel-bone in the dictionary

  1. Ruehls
  2. Rueifang
  3. rueing
  4. Rueisuei
  5. Ruel
  6. ruel-bone
  7. ruel-bones
  8. Ruelas
  9. Ruelases
  10. rueless
  11. ruelike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruel-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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