Wishbone
The wishbone is a bird’s forked collarbone, which two people pull apart after a roast dinner; by custom the one left with the longer piece gets their wish. The custom is older than Thanksgiving: in England around 1600 the bone was already called the merrythought, and the word “wishbone” is first recorded only in 1860.
Meaning
The wishbone is the furcula, a Y-shaped bone in front of a bird’s shoulders made from the two clavicles fused together (Smithsonian magazine). The bone is older than birds: theropod dinosaurs had one, Tyrannosaurus rex included. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates “merrythought” to about 1600 and “wishbone” to 1860, and explains both names by the custom of making a wish while two people pull the bone in two, the winner getting the longer piece. Another form is “wishing-bone”. Smithsonian magazine, writing for Thanksgiving, describes the Turkey’s.
Origin and history
The earliest writers on the custom treat it as a small superstition. Joseph Addison, in The Spectator in 1711, lists it among the trifles that frighten people more than real evils: he had seen “a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought.” John Morrison’s annotated edition of the essays explains the joke. Two young people at dinner take the breast-bone of a chicken, each hooks it with a little finger, and they pull until it breaks; the one left holding the middle part, by the custom, will be married first. Addison’s lover had not got it, and could eat no more dinner.
The custom’s documented history begins with the English merrythought of about 1600.
See also
Turkey, Turkey, Cornucopia, Pumpkin and pumpkin pie, Flint corn (multicoloured corn), Three Sisters.
Sources
- wishbone (n.); merrythought (n.), Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary
- The Spectator; essays I.–L., No. VII (Addison, 1711), with notes by John Morrison, 1896 (Internet Archive full text), Internet Archive
- This Thanksgiving, Make a Wish on a Dinosaur, Brian Switek, Dinosaur Tracking, Smithsonian Magazine
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research