To Have A Bone To Pick With Someone
In literature and slang, those interchangeable modes of expression, they sometimes call the cemetery the bone orchard.
In The Suppliants by Euripides, a skeletal army sprang from dragon’s teeth that were planted in the ground
Both are wrong.
Teeth are of enamel and not of bone. From them, no skeleton would grow. Enamel is the hardest of materials in the body and a warrior composed from it would be a mighty one indeed. However, he would be dull and formless. Pointed, perhaps, like an incisor or flat and blunt like a pre-molar.
Nor do buried bones grow upward like a tree. Perhaps, while one’s alive, but after a certain early age, one’s bones grow no more. The spine may bend, like a fruit-heavy limb, but it would never spring out of the ground. The hollow of the bone, unlike a xylem or phloem, is clogged with congealed marrow, so transpiration cannot occur.
The bone is the ground is more like a tuber. It develops in the darkness. Thus, if one hoped to build a skeletal army from amongst the recently dead, one would have to dig for the bones one’s self and assemble a soldier from the parts.
It may be wise to take a companion, as there is a lot of digging involved. To ensure a fully functioning anatomy, be sure you’ve removed all the bones from the grave.
This is where we get the phrase to pick the bones clean.
In The Suppliants by Euripides, a skeletal army sprang from dragon’s teeth that were planted in the ground
Both are wrong.
Teeth are of enamel and not of bone. From them, no skeleton would grow. Enamel is the hardest of materials in the body and a warrior composed from it would be a mighty one indeed. However, he would be dull and formless. Pointed, perhaps, like an incisor or flat and blunt like a pre-molar.
Nor do buried bones grow upward like a tree. Perhaps, while one’s alive, but after a certain early age, one’s bones grow no more. The spine may bend, like a fruit-heavy limb, but it would never spring out of the ground. The hollow of the bone, unlike a xylem or phloem, is clogged with congealed marrow, so transpiration cannot occur.
The bone is the ground is more like a tuber. It develops in the darkness. Thus, if one hoped to build a skeletal army from amongst the recently dead, one would have to dig for the bones one’s self and assemble a soldier from the parts.
It may be wise to take a companion, as there is a lot of digging involved. To ensure a fully functioning anatomy, be sure you’ve removed all the bones from the grave.
This is where we get the phrase to pick the bones clean.