Not wanting to waste any of a chicken or turkey, many cooks will scrape and pluck the remaining pieces of meat from a carcass before they throw the bones into the soup pot or trash can. Most often, the implement used to cut these scraps of meat from the bone is a simple kitchen knife, but an instrument specifically designed for this purpose also exists. It is called a xyster, a word that derives from a Greek source meaning to scrape. When the word first appeared in English in the late seventeenth century, it was used not in a culinary context, but in a surgical one.