Phrase guide

chew the meat and spit out the bones

verb · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

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Pronunciation

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verb

Meaning 1

To take in a great deal of information and selectively disregard some of it as invalid or inapplicable.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: idiomatic

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

No etymology was provided for this word.

Word forms

Inflections and variants

chews the meat and spits out the bones — present, singular, third-person
chewing the meat and spitting out the bones — participle, present
chewed the meat and spat out the bones — participle, past
chewed the meat and spat out the bones — past
chewed the meat and spit out the bones — participle, past
chewed the meat and spit out the bones — past

Word family

Derived and related words

Derived: none provided

Related: separate the wheat from the chaff

Semantic map

Other relationships

Sources

Where this information comes from

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Changes made: Wiktionary markup was removed and matching senses were grouped; WordNet and CMUdict evidence was merged into the canonical word page. Source quotations with separate cited works are not republished.

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