Etymology

innominate bone

in·nom·in·ate bone

Today it means: Synonym of hip bone (“one of two roughly symmetrical parts of the skeleton, each composed of the fused iliac, ischial, and pubic bones, that together form the sides of the pelvis”). Full definition →

First used early 18th c.Late Latin os innōminātum
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The story

  1. Late Latin · calque ofos innōminātum
  2. English todayinnominate bone

From innominate (“having no name, nameless, unnamed”, adjective) + bone (noun), possibly a calque of Late Latin os innōminātum. It has been suggested that the bone “remains unnamed and unnameable” because it “is of so complex and irregular a form, that it bears no perceptible resemblance to any other known object”.

First known use, by meaning

  • from early 18th c. Synonym of hip bone (“one of two roughly symmetrical parts of the skeleton, each composed of the fused iliac, ischial, and pubic bones, that together form the sides of the pelvis”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.