Definition
To establish or ingrain firmly within someone's nature.
In Context
- ""And for thy ill tongue, and worse practices, his lordship knows they are bred in the bone of thee.""
- ""My father was a born aristocrat. I think, in some preexistent state, he must have been in the higher circles of spirits, and brought all his old court pride along with him; for it was ingrain, bred in the bone, though he was originally of poor and not in any way of noble family.""
- "Davies meticulously establishes the background, the breeding in the bone, of his hero's life."
- "The distinctiveness of Bellocchio's approach lay in his taking mental affliction, in this case epilepsy, and figuring it as symbolic of the self-immolating rage and frustration that the dysfunctional family breeds in the bone."
- "One principle ought to be bred in the bone of any European after the carnage of the 20th century: that no act of state bears such ominous consequences as changing a border by force."