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Word for the Wise May 03, 2007 Broadcast Topic: Making bones

We're guessing that only someone with a bone to pick would challenge us to explain why the idiomatic making bones is more familiar in its negative form—making no bones about something—than in its positive form. (来源:EnglishCN.com)

We'll admit to only a small bit of hesitancy when it comes to parsing the business of bone-making. We know that making bones was once believed to have a relationship with dice—remember dice were once made out of bone—but lexicographers have long dismissed any supposed link as no more than coincidental. To make bones is "to show hesitation, uncertainty, or scruple;" to make no bones is "to be certain, forthright, or direct."

The phrasing has been around for a long time, and lexicographers theorize it may originate in a phrase that traces back to 15th century dining: finding bones in something. To find bones in one's food—say, in one's soup—was a decided negative, while finding no bones was a plus. Word watchers suspect the modern metaphor developed from that practical culinary application, and today's diners (and those abstaining) have long enjoyed—and made good, so to speak—the making no bones metaphor.

 
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