funny bone
2
3.7
- noun
- /ˈfʌni boʊn/
:
nervio cubital
- Then his whole arm went numb, as if he'd hit the nerve in his elbow, the funny bone.
- tickles your funny bone
- hit my funny bone
- struck the funny bone
Examples
-
It'll tickle your funny bone.
Blog text (3) -
I hit my funny bone and was left lame for two days.
Fiction book (1991) -
That tickled my funny bone.
-
It's like getting a continuous pounding on the funny bone.
Fiction book (2000) -
But then when you hit your funny bone, that's actually banging your ulnar nerve, which is causing that pain or that odd sort of sensation in this, this bit of your hand.
-
When she accidentally bumped the edge of the table, her funny bone began to tingle sharply.
-
He laughed when he accidentally knocked his funny bone against the door frame and felt the unusual sensation.
-
After hitting his funny bone, he couldn't stop shaking his arm to relieve the tingling feeling.
Synonyms
1
4.8
A long thin part in the arm by the elbow that sends messages to the hand and two small fingers
The spot at the elbow that makes your arm tingle when hit
Surface Forms
Morphology
The combination of 'funny' (odd/strange) and 'bone' gives a learner some clue that it refers to a bony spot that produces an unusual sensation when struck, so a B1 learner might guess a strange feeling associated with part of the elbow. However, the precise anatomical reference to the ulnar nerve and the characteristic tingling sensation is not directly predictable from the words alone and the construction is not cross-linguistically regular, so the meaning is only partly transparent.
Etymology
The noun funny bone comes from the odd feeling you get when you hit the inside of your elbow; a nerve lies very close to the skin and makes a sharp, tingling shock. Because the touch felt 'funny' and it was not a real bone, people started calling that spot the funny bone.