Pulling the Wishbone

The wishbone is the furcula, the fused collarbones of a bird. The usual story says the Etruscans saw birds as oracles and wished on dried hen bones, and that the Romans turned it into a tug-of-war. These tales appear in many popular articles but trace back to no clear ancient text, so they are best called legend. What is documented is the English name merrythought, in use by the 17th century, and the custom of two people breaking it with the longer piece foretelling an early marriage.

English settlers brought the merrythought to North America, where the plentiful wild turkey made it a fixture of the autumn table. By the 19th century the word wishbone had largely replaced merrythought in America, and the phrase 'lucky break' is often linked to the custom, though that link is folk etymology. Today it is mostly a Thanksgiving ritual, and fossil finds have shown that some dinosaurs had a furcula too.