bone up

verb

boned up; boning up; bones up

intransitive verb

1
: to try to master necessary information quickly : cram
bone up for the exam
2
: to renew one's skill or refresh one's memory
boned up on the speech just before giving it

Examples of bone up in a Sentence

I suggest you bone up a bit on torts before the next attempt at the bar exam.
Recent Examples on the Web The question is likely to come up again, so Haley and the rest of them would do well to bone up on the subject. Leonard Greene, The Mercury News, 6 Jan. 2024 Where to Learn About Medicare There are quite a few places to bone up on Medicare, though beneficiaries rarely use many of them, according to the MedicareAdvantage.com survey. Richard Eisenberg, Fortune Well, 20 Nov. 2023 Stallworth and Drew Gentry, her biology teacher who was fossil hunting with her, followed the trail of bone up a hill and discovered the skull of a prehistoric whale that may be a new species. Outdoor Life, 20 Sep. 2023 There are resources for educators who want to bone up on A.I. in a hurry. Kevin Roose, New York Times, 24 Aug. 2023 The frames still manage to feel highly composed, as if the actors have been blocked to within an inch of their lives; Glazer has clearly boned up on his Haneke. Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 22 May 2023 Time to bone up on your history, folks. Meirav Devash, Allure, 28 Sep. 2022 Part of that push comes in free trainings the group has offered for hundreds of Democratic campaign staff to bone up on digital best practices, paid fellowships for young digital staffers and $150,000 in digital ad-training grants for organizations based in battleground states. Ben Kamisar, NBC News, 25 Aug. 2022 And in her own unique way, she's been training for this moment — working as a guidance counselor for 20 years to become an expert in reading people, teaching Driver's Ed at the high school to learn pit maneuvers, and volunteering at the computer lab to bone up on complex data research. Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 20 July 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bone up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1873, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of bone up was in 1873

Dictionary Entries Near bone up

Cite this Entry

“Bone up.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bone%20up. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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