sawbones

noun

saw·​bones ˈsȯ-ˌbōnz 

plural sawbones or sawboneses

slang

: physician, surgeon

Did you know?

Sawbones cut its first literary tooth in Charles Dickens's 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers, when Sam Weller says to Mr. Pickwick, "Don't you know what a sawbones is, sir? … I thought everybody know'd as a sawbones was a surgeon." An evocative term that calls to mind the saws that 19th-century surgeons used to perform amputations, sawbones quickly became an established member of the English language, employed by such authors as H. G. Wells, Mark Twain, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Mercifully, medical technology has improved dramatically since then (the surgical saws used in procedures today are a far cry from the primitive tools of yesteryear), but the word sawbones is still used, often in a humorous context.

Synonyms

• croaker [slang]
• doc
• doctor
• medic
• medico
• physician

Examples of sawbones in a Sentence

a real old-timer who remembers when you could expect a sawbones to make a house call

Recent Examples on the Web

Under the Knife 2 continues the story of Dr. Derek Stiles, the brilliant young sawbones from the original game. —Earnest Cavalli, WIRED, 1 July 2008

Word History

First Known Use

1837, in the meaning defined above

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