Dictionary

ruel-bone en · NOUN

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Middle English rewell bon, ruel bon (“walrus ivory”), from Old French roal, rohal (“walrus ivory”), ultimately from Old Norse hrosshvalr (“walrus”).

Meanings

1. (archaic, literary) A piece of ivory, generally from a marine mammal.
   • White it glimmered, and the sea shimmered with star-mirrors in a silver net; cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone in the moon-foam were gleaming wet. 1962, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Sea-Bell:
   • RUEL-BONE Is mentioned by Chaucer, and in the following passage, as the material of a saddle. It is not, of course, to be thence supposed that ruel-bone was commonly or even actually used for that purpose,[…] 1850, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, page 697:

Forms