RIB

I. noun Etymology: Middle English, from Old English ~b; akin to Old High German rippi ~, Old Church Slavic rebro, and probably to Greek erephein to roof over Date: before 12th century 1. any of the paired curved bony or partly cartilaginous rods that stiffen the walls of the body of most vertebrates and protect the viscera, b. a cut of meat including a ~, a boneless cut of meat (as beef or pork) from a ~ section, wife , something resembling a ~ in shape or function: as, a. a traverse member of the frame of a ship that runs from keel to deck, a light fore-and-aft member in an airplane's wing, one of the stiff strips supporting an umbrella's fabric, one of the arches in Romanesque and Gothic vaulting meeting and crossing one another and dividing the whole vaulted space into triangles, an elongated ridge: as, a. a vein of an insect's wing, one of the primary veins of a leaf, one of the ridges in a knitted or woven fabric, II. transitive verb (~bed; ~bing) Date: circa 1547 to furnish or enclose with ~s, to knit so as to form vertical ridges in, ~ber noun III. noun Etymology: 4~ Date: 1929 joke , parody , IV. transitive verb (~bed; ~bing) Etymology: probably from 1~; from the tickling of the ~s to cause laughter Date: 1930 to poke fun at ; kid , ~ber noun