Word.ws English Dictionary

sawbones

sawbones noun: a surgeon.

Noun

sawbones (plural sawbones or sawboneses)

  1. (slang) A surgeon.
    • "That is wicked, or rather, villainous: Queen Madásima was a very distinguished lady, and it should not be assumed that so high a princess would become the paramour of a sawbones or a quack, and whoever believes the contrary is lying, like the base scoundrel he is.Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 189

Forms of sawbones

pluralsawbones
pluralsawboneses

Origin of sawbones

From saw + bones.

Questions about sawbones

What does sawbones mean?
Sawbones means a surgeon.
What part of speech is sawbones?
Sawbones is a noun.
What is the plural of sawbones?
The plural of sawbones is sawbones.

Words near sawbones in the dictionary

  1. sawbenches
  2. sawbill
  3. sawbills
  4. sawblade
  5. sawblades
  6. sawbones
  7. sawboneses
  8. Sawbridgeworth
  9. sawbuck
  10. sawbucks
  11. sawbwa

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sawbones (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-sawbones.ogg.

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