chew the meat and spit out the bones

verb

To take in a great deal of information and selectively disregard some of it as invalid or inapplicable.

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Meanings

verbchew the meat and spit out the bones (third-person singular simple present chews the meat and spits out the bones, present participle chewing the meat and spitting out the bones, simple past and past participle chewed the meat and spat out the bones or chewed the meat and spit out the bones)

present singular third person chews the meat and spits out the bones · participle present chewing the meat and spitting out the bones · participle past chewed the meat and spat out the bones · past chewed the meat and spat out the bones · participle past chewed the meat and spit out the bones · past chewed the meat and spit out the bones

  1. idiomaticTo take in a great deal of information and selectively disregard some of it as invalid or inapplicable.

    Do not swallow every story that is told. There may be a grain of truth somewhere in all the myths, but chew the meat and spit out the bones.

    2002, A. Frank Goepel, A Realm Without Rules, page 116
Cite this entry
APA

chew the meat and spit out the bones. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chew%20the%20meat%20and%20spit%20out%20the%20bones

MLA

“chew the meat and spit out the bones.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chew%20the%20meat%20and%20spit%20out%20the%20bones. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “chew the meat and spit out the bones,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chew%20the%20meat%20and%20spit%20out%20the%20bones.

Source: chew the meat and spit out the bones on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.