"Merriam Webster's online dictionary resource declares the term 'boner' as having three alternative definitions and it would depend upon the context in which it was said as to how we would establish its intended meaning.
The first of the three definitions is the name given to a person who bones, or rather debones, meat, for instance a butcher could be referred to in this context. This does not appear to be the most common usage of the word though, and only Merriam Webster's lists this as a formal definition.
The word was first coined between 1895 and 1900 and may well have been used in the above context; the alternative definitions are believed to date after this time. One of these definitions of the word boner traces back to 1912, and was used in Baseball slang for a clumsy or stupid mistake and is thought to be a truncation of the term Bonehead.
Similarly the most common use of the word, is also a truncation, this time of the slang term bone-on, first thought to have been heard circa the 40s as a crude reference to an erection of the penis, which again is believed to have its origins in another slang term, 'hard on' which dates as far back as 1893.
The first of the three definitions is the name given to a person who bones, or rather debones, meat, for instance a butcher could be referred to in this context. This does not appear to be the most common usage of the word though, and only Merriam Webster's lists this as a formal definition.
The word was first coined between 1895 and 1900 and may well have been used in the above context; the alternative definitions are believed to date after this time. One of these definitions of the word boner traces back to 1912, and was used in Baseball slang for a clumsy or stupid mistake and is thought to be a truncation of the term Bonehead.
Similarly the most common use of the word, is also a truncation, this time of the slang term bone-on, first thought to have been heard circa the 40s as a crude reference to an erection of the penis, which again is believed to have its origins in another slang term, 'hard on' which dates as far back as 1893.