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 if he can but patch me up, it may not yet be too late.

6. (Stock Exchange.)—(1) The shares of Wickens, Pease and Co.; (2) North British 4% 1st Preference Shares, the 4% 2nd Preference Stock being nicknamed Bonettas.

As dry or hard as a bone, phr. (common), i.e., as free from moisture as a bone after it has been picked and cleaned, as by a dog.

1833. Marryat, Peter Simple, i. It's as dry as a bone.

1837. R. Nicoll, Poems (1843), 83. Dubs were hard as ony bane.

One end is pretty sure to be bone, phr. (American).—An old time saying equivalent to an admission that 'all is not gold that glitters'; that the realization of one's hopes never comes up to the ideal formed of them.

1888. The World, 13 May. People here (in the west) have to get up and get in order to make both ends meet, and even then one end is pretty sure to be bone.

To be upon the bones, phr. (vulgar).—To attack.

b. 1616, d. 1704. Sir R. L'Estrange (in Annandale). Puss had a month's mind to be upon the bones of him, but was not willing to pick a quarrel.

To feel a thing in one's bones.—A simile signifying assurance; conviction.

1887. Scribner's Magazine. I ain't a-goin' to mention no names but I kin feel it in my bones that things ain't on the square here, there's a nigger in the fence.

1888. Missouri Republican, 22 Feb. Nat. M. Shelton, of Lancaster, said: 'I am in the race of attorney-general, and I feel it in my bones that I will get the nomination.

To make no bones, phr. (familiar).—To make no scruple; to show no hesitation; to commence and finish a work without difficulty—now restricted to colloquial use; it was formerly current literary coin, and is frequently to be met with in our older literature. Its earlier form was, 'to find bones in,' which clearly shows the phrase to have originated in a reference to bones in soup, or similar food, regarded as obstacles to swallowing. In this sense it is found as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Paston Letters. It does not occur in its present shape to make bones until a century later; but, from this period on to the end of the seventeenth century it was in constant use.

1459. Paston Lett., 331, I., 444. And fond that tyme no bonys in the matere. [m.]

1542. Udall, Apoph. of Erasmus, p. 133 (1877). Yea, and rather then faill, both whole mainor places, and also whole Lordships, the 'make no bones, ne sticke not, quite and cleue to swallow doune the narrow lane, and the same to spue up again.'

1565. Shacklock, Hatchet of Heresies. And instede of that whiche he saide, This is my body, they haue made no bones at it, to say, this is my brede.

1590. Greene, Francesco's Fortune, in wks. VIII., 189. Tricke thy selfe vp in thy best reparrell, and make no bones at it but on a woing [wooing].

1596. Nashe, Saffron Walden, in wks. III., 112. He would make no bones to take the wall of Sir Philip Sidney.

1677. Wycherley, Plain Dealer, Act iii. Man. How could I refrain? A lawyer talked peremptorily and saucily to me, and as good as gave me the lie. Free. They do it so often to one another at the bar, that they make no bones on't elsewhere.

1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, ch. lxiv. Do you think that the Government or the Opposition would make any bones about accepting the seat if it be offered to them?