the.com/kneecap
the only bone you can survive without, yet it ruins your whole day when wronged
means The kneecap is the small, movable bone (the patella) at the front of your knee joint that protects it and helps your leg straighten.
from A plain compound of "knee" + "cap" — "knee" descending from Old English "cneow," with cousins across the Germanic family and ultimately related to the same ancient root that gave Latin "genu" and Greek "gony." The "cap" half pictures the bone as a little cover sitting over the joint, the same homely logic that named the patella in Latin, literally "little dish." The grim verb sense — to "kneecap" someone by shooting that joint — is a 20th-century coinage from paramilitary punishment.
- late bloomer
- Doesn't fully harden until kids are around three
- latin roots
- Patella means little dish or pan
- mob favorite
- Kneecapping became infamous shorthand for crippling sabotage
- hidden gland
- Floats over the joint, anchored by tendons not sockets
- sesamoid bone
- It's the largest of these tendon-embedded bones