chavel-bone

English

Alternative forms

• chavel bone

Etymology

From Middle English chavylbone, chavyl bon (also as Middle English chawylbon, chawlbone, jawe bone > Early Modern English chawe bone, chaw-bone, jaw-bone > English jawbone), equivalent to chavel +‎ bone. Doublet of jawbone.

Noun

chavel-bone (plural chavel-bones)

1. (anatomy, archaic or obsolete) Jawbone.
   • 1991, Colette Rausch, Leigh A. Payne, Medieval Drama, page 39:

     Cain kills Abel with a 'chavel-bone' (jaw bone), as according to apocryphal legend, and then hides his body under a pile of grass or hay.

   • 1992, Joan DeVee Dixon, George Rochberg: A Bio-bibliographic Guide to His Life and Works, page 325:

     It is the cry of Electra […] of Antigone for the father, for the brother struck down by the chavel-bone of Cain, death's storm-trooper, the man of ten-thousand names and ten-thousand faces […]

   • 2005, John Passfield, Water Lane: The Pilgrimage of Christopher Marlowe, page 120:

     "With this chavel-bone I shall slay thee!"