boneyness

English

Etymology

From boney +‎ -ness.

Noun

boneyness (uncountable)

Rare spelling of boniness.
- 1728, Eliza Haywood, “The History of Signiora Miramene de los Verronvile and the Baron Glencairn”, in The Agreeable Caledonian: or, Memoirs of Signiora di Morella, […], London: […] Richard King, […] And Sold by W. Meadows, […], →OCLC, page 36:
  His Stature is rather tall than ſhort; his Shape is the moſt exact that can be, nothing was ever more juſtly proportion’d; and though he cannot be call’d fat, he is plump enough not to have any Thing of that Boneyneſs which renders the Lean ſo diſagreeable; […]
- 1934 April 8, John W. Kendrick, “Non Omnis Moriar”, in Don Shoemaker, editor, The Carolina Magazine, volume LXIII, number 12, supplement to The Daily Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, N.C.: Publications Union Board of the University of North Carolina, →OCLC, page 8, column 4:
  The two sisters worked all day and danced all night. Their slenderness was a topic of conversation. Soon Milly was engaged to a son of the wealthiest man in the city and Mag had almost captured a foreign prince who was visiting in the city. But despite her wiles, he had never quite stuck his foot in the trap. He had never become reconciled to the “boneyness” of American women, as he termed it.
- 1974, Mark Smith, “Nymphomania”, in The Death of the Detective, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, book 1 (Prelude to Murder), page 78:
  She has the nose and cheekbones of a Cherokee and is so black and statuesque in her muscularity and boneyness that she seems carved by an ax from an effulgent vein of coal.
- 2001, Ruth Ann Lief, “A Touch of the Mother”, in Something to Remember It By and Other Short Stories, Lincoln, Neb.: Writers Club Press, →ISBN, page 158:
  Peggy felt the soft bristles and the boneyness of his chin and then the very wet lips on her cheek, because she had turned her head.