A supercut of every time a character on Bones says 'bones' would last roughly 22 minutes

Bones
(Image credit: Facebook.com/Bones)

Most of the time when an article begins, "I've never seen the show X, but…," you ought to run for the hills. This delightful lexical indexing of the word 'bones' in the TV show Bones, however, might be the exception. For The Verge's Hack Week, writer Sean O'Kane, who claims to have never seen an episode of the 10-season long crime drama, discovered that in the past decade of the show's history, the word "bones" only referred to actual bones 820 times in the 2,668 times it was uttered in the script. (The other 1,848 references were to the show's protagonist, Temperance "Bones" Brennan, who herself says "bones" 346 times).

O'Kane used fan written scripts to crunch his numbers, so he warns they might be a little off. That said, he guesses a supercut of all the times the word "bones" is said on Bones would last an entire 22 minutes.

You know that thing where you say a word over and over again and it starts to lose its meaning? Heading there fast.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.