Down on your marrow-bones, i.e. knees. That marrow in this phrase is not a corruption of “Mary,” meaning the Virgin, is palpable from the analogous phrase, the marrow-bone stage—walking. The leg-bone is the marrow-bone of beef and mutton, and the play is on Marylebone (London).
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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.
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