Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

bare bones en · NOUN

Etymology

By metaphor with the skeleton versus the whole body including the flesh.

Meanings

  1. (plural, plural-only) The essential elements of something; the minimum viable set of elements; especially when they are described without going into detail.
    • Typically, this meant that the teams were turning around two sets a week, with a train rolling into the depot on a Sunday for what Hinze describes as a "big strip-out". This would pull the carriages back almost to the bare bones. 2025 July 23, Richard Wilcock, “A new dawn for the Electrostars”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 27:
    • The bare bones of a cookbook are its recipes, but as a genre it is so elastic and malleable that it can contain a range of other purposes and dimensions. 1982 April 10, Michael Bronski, “We Are How We Cook”, in Gay Community News, page 7:
    • He had only been taught the bare bones of the system, but carried on regardless.

Relateds

skeleton · bare-boned · flesh out · skeletonized · bells and whistles