Bone (To)

To filch, as, I boned it. Shakespeare (2 Henry VI., act i. 3) says. “By these ten bones, my lord …” meaning his ten fingers; and (Hamlet, iii. 2) calls the fingers “pickers and stealers.” Putting the two together there can be no doubt that “to bone” means to finger, that is, “to pick and steal.”

“You thought that I was buried deep

Quite decent-like and chary,

But from her grave in Mary-bone,

Theyʹve come and boned your Mary!”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.