A skeleton is the framework of bones inside your body that gives you shape, protects your organs, and lets you move. Without your skeleton, you'd be a puddle on the floor. Your 206 bones work together like the frame of a building, holding everything up and in place.

Your skeleton does three essential jobs. First, it supports your body, letting you stand, sit, and move. Second, it protects delicate parts: your skull shields your brain, and your ribs guard your heart and lungs. Third, your bones work with muscles to create movement. When you bend your arm, muscles pull on the bones of your skeleton to make it happen.

The word also describes the basic framework or outline of anything. A writer might create a skeleton of a story before adding all the details. An architect draws a skeleton of a building showing just the main structure. When you see skeletal remains of an ancient animal in a museum, you're looking at just the bones, with everything else long gone.

People use skeleton in colorful expressions too. A skeleton crew is the smallest number of workers needed to keep something running. Having a skeleton in your closet means hiding an embarrassing secret from your past.