'Skeleton' is Greek for 'dried up' — from 'skellein.' It meant a mummified body before meaning bones.
The internal framework of bones and cartilage that supports and gives structure to the body of a vertebrate.
From Modern Latin 'skeleton,' from Greek 'skeleton (sōma)' meaning '(body) dried up,' from 'skeletos' (dried up, withered, mummified), from 'skellein' (to dry up, to parch). The word entered English through New Latin anatomical terminology. The underlying Greek root is related to 'sklēros' (hard
The word 'skeleton' literally means 'dried-up body.' Ancient Greeks used 'skeletos' to describe mummies and desiccated corpses, not bare bones. When Renaissance anatomists adopted the term into New Latin, they narrowed the meaning to the bony framework alone — stripping the word of its flesh just as they stripped