spade-bone Chiefly dial.
[app. f. spade n.1, but perh. for spaude- or spalde-bone: see spauld.]
The shoulder-blade.
| 1612 Drayton Poly-olb. v. 266 A diuination strange.., By th' shoulder of a Ram,..Which vsuallie they boile, the spade-boane beeing bar'd. 1671 Skinner Etymol. Ling. Angl., Spade-bone, vox agro Lincoln. usitatissima. 1790 W. H. Marshall Rur. Econ. Midl. II. 443 Spade-bone, the shoulder bone; the blade bone. 1823– in dial. glossaries (chiefly northern and eastern). 1844 Borrow in Knapp Life (1899) I. 394 Mahomet,..it is said, wrote his Coran on mutton spade bones. |