Bred-In-The-Bone Meaning

(idiomatic, of a person) Inveterate or habitual; long-standing.

Example: 1998, Judith Krantz, The Jewels of Tessa Kent, Bantam (1999), ISBN 0553561375, page 129:
  They had the kind of bred-in-the-bone manners that were unobtrusively the same for one and all.
2008, Erna Paris, The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice, Seven Stories Press (2009), ISBN 9781583228791, page 47:
  But few could match the bred-in-the-bone exceptionalism rooted deep in America's self-image.
2010, G. J. Meyer, The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty, Bantam Books (2011), ISBN 9780385340779, page 522:
  Her navy had barely broken off its pursuit of the fleeing Spaniards, in fact, when Elizabeth exposed her bred-in-the-bone selfishness, her cold indifference to the well-being of the subjects whose supposed love for her she and the royal propagandists endlessly celebrated as one of the wonders of the age.
1982, Mary McGrory, "Arms Issue Joined At Grass Roots", Toledo Blade, 17 March 1982:
  Antrim, bred-in-the-bone Republican conservative, has a proud patriotic tradition.
2001, Peter Steinfels, "Beliefs; A 19th-century theologian whose questions remain pertinent to the Roman Catholic Church", The New York Times, 24 February 2001:
  Critics see an unreasonable craving for authority in Newman's anti-liberalism. He was also a bred-in-the-bone Tory, and as the youthful leader of the Oxford Movement that sought a bulwark against Parliamentary manipulation of Anglicanism in its ancient Catholic roots, he could be savagely polemical.
2005, William Johnson, Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, McClelland & Stewart (2006), ISBN 9780771095542, page 433:
  The point of this political genealogy is not only that Lawrence Cannon was a bred-in-the-bone Liberal, […]