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raw-head and bloody-bones. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Alternative forms
Proper noun
raw-head and bloody-bones
- A malicious bogeyman (or two bogeymen) formerly used to frighten children into good behaviour.
1928, Lewis Spence, Mysteries of Britain, page vii. 169:In his New View of London (1708), Hatton assures us that hackney coachmen in the City were wont to swear "by Gog and Magog" [...] Some apprentices, he tells us, were as "frighted at the names of Gog and Magog as little children are at the terrible sound of Raw-head and Bloody-bones"[.]