Fillet (pronounced “fill-AY”) is a piece of meat or fish with the bones removed. When you order a fish fillet at a restaurant, you get the meaty part without having to worry about swallowing tiny bones. A chicken breast fillet is boneless chicken, easy to cut and eat.

To fillet a fish means to use a sharp knife to separate the flesh from the skeleton, a skill that takes practice to master. Good cooks can fillet a whole fish in minutes, creating neat, boneless pieces.

In architecture and carpentry, a fillet is a narrow decorative strip or band, like the thin piece of wood trim where a wall meets the ceiling. But when you see the word in a cookbook or on a menu, it almost always refers to boneless meat or fish, ready to cook and eat without extra work picking out bones.