Why Do We Break a Bone to Make a Wish?

“I win! I got the bigger piece!”

One person celebrates. The other looks down at the shorter half of a turkey wishbone. So much excitement over a broken bone.

It's a familiar Thanksgiving game: two people make a wish, pull the bone apart, and whoever gets the longer piece is supposed to have better luck.

But why break a bone to make a wish?

Breaking a wishbone is an old game of luck, though no one knows exactly how it began. And before it became a Thanksgiving wish-making tradition, people were pulling the same bone to predict something else: who would get married first.

When a Wishbone Could Predict Your Love Life

The wishbone's origin story often begins with the Etruscans, who lived in ancient Italy long before the Roman Empire.

They practiced divination, looking for signs of what the future might hold. According to a popular story, they also kept chicken wishbones as lucky objects. The Romans supposedly began breaking them because there weren't enough lucky bones for everyone.

Although divination involving birds was practiced in the ancient world, the specific story connecting Etruscan wishbones to today's game lacks firm historical evidence.

The clearer trail leads to England, where the bone had a surprisingly cheerful name: merrythought.

The word appeared in John Florio's English-Italian dictionary in 1598. By the seventeenth century, breaking the bone was a recognized custom, although the rules and predictions could vary.

One popular prediction involved marriage.

In one traditional version, two people pulled on opposite ends of the bone. Whoever received the longer piece was supposed to marry first.

Imagine leaving your romantic future to a chicken bone. No awkward introductions, no complicated courtship. Just dinner and a snap.

The custom eventually crossed the Atlantic. In America, another name emerged: wishbone.

An 1842 newspaper report in The Baltimore Sun, quoting a Boston newspaper, mentioned Thanksgiving festivities in Massachusetts involving “wish-bones and mince-pies.” It's an early glimpse of the familiar name appearing alongside the holiday.

But merrythought didn't disappear overnight. Both names continued to circulate, and the older marriage prediction gradually became just one version of a game increasingly associated with making wishes.

Thanksgiving hadn't invented the tradition. It had simply become a natural place for it, with a roasted turkey on the table and plenty of people ready to test their luck.

Your Thanksgiving Turkey Has Something in Common with Dinosaurs

The wishbone has a scientific name: the furcula, from a Latin word meaning a little fork.

In birds, it's a V- or Y-shaped structure near the upper chest. Its anatomy is closely connected to the shoulders, and in flying birds, it helps manage the forces created by wing movements.

But scientists have found this familiar bird bone somewhere unexpected: inside dinosaur fossils.

In 1997, researchers reported a furcula in a Velociraptor fossil in the scientific journal Nature.

Yes, Velociraptor had a wishbone.

Scientists have identified furculae in several theropod dinosaurs, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and the ancestors of modern birds.

These discoveries helped answer an important question. For years, the apparent absence of wishbones in dinosaurs had been used to challenge the idea that birds descended from them. Fossil evidence helped remove that objection.

Today, scientists recognize birds as the surviving members of the dinosaur family tree.

Which means your Thanksgiving turkey isn't merely related to dinosaurs. In evolutionary terms, it is one.

There's another surprise. Some dinosaurs had wishbones even though they couldn't fly. The structure existed before modern bird flight evolved, although researchers continue to study its evolutionary origins and early functions.

Humans have collarbones, too, but ours don't form the same forked structure found in birds.

So the little bone at the Thanksgiving table is more than an unusual leftover. It's a piece of anatomy that connects a familiar holiday bird to animals that lived millions of years before humans existed.

Two People, One Bone, and a Little Luck

The wishbone is removed from the cooked bird, cleaned, and allowed to dry until it's brittle enough to snap.

Then two people each take one end, silently make a wish, and pull.

Whoever gets the longer piece wins.

Unless, of course, the pieces look almost identical.

That's when a peaceful Thanksgiving dinner can turn into a miniature courtroom. Both players inspect the evidence. Someone insists their piece is longer. A third person gets recruited as an unofficial judge.

Some families say an even break means both wishes count. Others have their own rules. There's no official wishbone authority to settle the argument.

What makes the game appealing isn't really the prize. Nobody can prove that the winner's wish will come true.

It's the brief moment before the snap.

One person might be wishing for a new job. The other might be hoping for something they'll never say out loud. Neither knows how the bone will break, and neither knows what the future holds.

For a few seconds, though, both have a reason to hope.

That may explain why the tradition remains so easy to pass along. It needs no special equipment or complicated instructions. Children can learn it in seconds, and adults can enjoy it without believing a chicken bone has magical powers.

The old marriage prediction has largely given way to wishes about almost anything. Yet the little contest still turns an ordinary leftover into a moment everyone at the table can share.

The next time a wishbone appears at Thanksgiving, look at it before taking your end.

That little fork of bone has been part of an English marriage game, an American holiday tradition, and an evolutionary story reaching back to dinosaurs.

Yet the ritual still takes only a few seconds.

Two people make a wish. They pull. The bone breaks.

It has never been able to tell anyone what the future holds.

But a piece of the past has become one of our favorite ways to wish for the future.

References: Word Histories · World Wide Words · Online Etymology Dictionary · Nature · American Museum of Natural History