骨
Meaning in Englishbone
Animated kanji stroke order
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Word context
What it means
骨 (hone) means the hard, calcified structural elements inside vertebrate bodies that support the frame and protect internal organs; in everyday Japanese it refers to an individual bone or bones collectively and is used when talking about anatomy, injuries, and the physical skeleton.
Main meanings
- 1. Figurative backbone or courage: used to describe inner strength or resolve rather than literal bone.
- 2. Framework or skeletal outline: the basic structure of a plan, organization, or object.
- 3. Human or animal remains focusing on bones, especially in archaeological or forensic contexts.
- 4. Culinary ingredient: bones used to make broths, stocks, or flavorings in cooking contexts.
- 5. In compound nouns it can denote a central point or essence (as in words meaning 'core' or 'main point').
How to use it
Used across registers from casual speech to formal reports: common in medical contexts to describe fractures or anatomy, in archaeology and forensics to discuss human remains, in culinary contexts when describing stocks or meat cuts with bones, and in idiomatic language to express backbone or the core structure of something; the noun is neutral and appears in many compound words and set phrases.
Variants and close terms
- 骨格 (kokkaku) — skeleton, frame
- 骨子 (kossu) — main point, gist
- こつ (kotsu) — knack or trick (often written in kana or with the same kanji)
- 肉 (niku) — meat, flesh (antonym in literal body-part sense)
Composition
骨 (hone) is a single-kanji pictograph: the character visually represents a bone with a central cavity (marrow) and protrusions like a vertebra and limb ends; historically the strokes depict the shape and internal marrow, giving the kanji its meaning of a physical bone.
Origin
The physical concept of bones predates written Japanese and appears in ancient Japanese practices of burial, medicine and craft; as writing arrived from China the kanji for bone was adopted and the term features in classical literature and medical texts from the Nara and Heian periods onward, reflecting long-standing attention to anatomy, funerary rites, and food preparation.
Word class
noun (名詞)