Meaning & use
skeleton
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Meanings
nouncountablebiology
The hard frame of bones inside a vertebrate animal that holds the body up and protects the organs.
Grammar: Countable: one skeleton, two skeletons.
Patterns
- the human skeleton
- a skeleton of something
The museum has a complete dinosaur skeleton in the main hall.
Birds have light skeletons that help them fly.
An X-ray showed that the child's skeleton was still growing.
nouncountable
A very thin person or animal, so thin that their bones show.
Grammar: Countable and usually used after a linking verb: he looked like a skeleton.
Patterns
- be a skeleton
- look like a skeleton
After months of illness he was a skeleton.
The rescued dog was little more than a skeleton.
nouncountable
The basic frame or outline of something, with everything unnecessary removed.
Grammar: Countable; often used before another noun, as in skeleton staff.
Patterns
- a skeleton of something
- skeleton staff
- skeleton crew
The report is still just a skeleton; the details will come later.
The office runs with a skeleton staff during the holidays.
They built the steel skeleton of the tower in only six weeks.
nouncountablefigurative
A secret about someone that they are ashamed of and want to keep hidden.
Grammar: Countable and almost always in the phrase a skeleton in the closet.
Patterns
- a skeleton in the closet
- skeletons in someone's closet
Every family has a few skeletons in the closet.
The scandal revealed skeletons the company had hidden for years.
Word forms
| plural | skeletons |
|---|
Common combinations
- human skeleton
- The human skeleton has more than two hundred bones.
- skeleton crew
- Only a skeleton crew stayed on board overnight.
- skeleton key
- The old house could be opened with a skeleton key.
- skeleton in the closet
- He has a skeleton in the closet that he never talks about.
- skeleton staff
- The library operates with a skeleton staff on Sundays.
Synonyms and how they differ
- framework
- A supporting structure; framework is used for buildings and ideas, not for bones in a body.
- outline
- A rough plan or shape; outline fits a written plan better than skeleton, which suggests the bare bones of a structure.
- bones
- Everyday word for the parts of a skeleton; it is less technical and does not usually mean the whole frame.
Word family
- skeletal adjective
- Relating to a skeleton, or extremely thin, as in 'skeletal remains'.
- skeletonize verb
- To reduce something to its basic parts or strip it down.
- exoskeleton noun
- A hard outer shell that supports some animals, such as insects and crabs.
Commonly confused: skeleton or skelington? skeleton or skeptic?
skeleton vs skelington
A common misspelling based on the way the word is often pronounced; the correct spelling is skeleton.
skeleton vs skeptic
A person who doubts things; it sounds a little similar but has nothing to do with bones.
Practice
Which sentence uses skeleton in its main biological sense?
Choose one answer.
Only the frog sentence refers to the actual frame of bones. The crew and closet sentences are figurative, and the diet sentence describes a very thin person.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “skeleton”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.