Word.ws English Dictionary

whirl-bone

whirl-bone noun: the patella, rotula, or kneecap.

Noun

whirl-bone (plural whirl-bones)

  1. (archaic) The patella, rotula, or kneecap.
  2. (archaic) The head of the femur.

Forms of whirl-bone

pluralwhirl-bones
alternative formwhirlbone
alternative formwhirl bone
alternative formwhirly-bone

Origin of whirl-bone

From Middle English whirlebon, whyrlebone, whorlbane (“hip or hip joint; the thighbone, femur; the rounded head of the femur; the kneecap, patella; a vertebra; ankle”), perhaps an alteration of Old English hweorfbān (“a joint, kneecap, vertebra”), equivalent to whirl + bone. Cognate with Scots whorlebone, whorle-bane (“hip bone, joint, vertebra”), German Wirbelbein (“vertebra”).

Questions about whirl-bone

What does whirl-bone mean?
Whirl-bone means the patella, rotula, or kneecap.
What part of speech is whirl-bone?
Whirl-bone is a noun.
What is the plural of whirl-bone?
The plural of whirl-bone is whirl-bones.

Words near whirl-bone in the dictionary

  1. whipworthy
  2. whir
  3. Whirily
  4. whirl
  5. whirl bone
  6. whirl-bone
  7. whirl-bones
  8. whirlabout
  9. whirlabouts
  10. whirlbat
  11. whirlbats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whirl-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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