crazy bone
- noun
- /ˈkreɪzi boʊn/
- Informal
:
hueso loco
- Avoid leaning on your crazy bone during meetings or you might get a nasty shock.
Examples
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She laughed as the tingling from her crazy bone slowly faded away.
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When I hit my crazy bone on the table, my whole arm tingled painfully.
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I hit my crazy bone on the table!
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Watch out for your crazy bone when you lean on the desk.
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I accidentally hit my crazy bone against the table, causing a sharp tingling sensation in my arm.
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When she bumped her crazy bone on the door frame, she felt an unusual shock run down her elbow.
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After striking his crazy bone, he laughed at the funny feeling that spread through his arm.
Synonyms
2
3.7
The spot on the elbow that makes a sharp, tingling pain when hit
1
4.8
A long thin part in the arm by the elbow that sends messages to the hand and two small fingers
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the area at the elbow that produces a sharp tingling when struck' cannot be derived from 'crazy' (strange) + 'bone' (skeletal tissue); the phrase is an idiosyncratic, informal name for a specific bodily sensation (a variant of 'funny bone'), not a transparent compositional description. Cross-linguistically and semantically there is no obvious link from the constituent meanings to the tactile/nerve sense, so a B1 learner knowing the words would not predict the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Crazy bone comes from the strange, electric feeling you get when you hit the inside of your elbow. The bone there sits over a nerve, so the hit makes your arm feel crazy, and the phrase now means the spot that gives a sharp 'tingling' or 'shock'.