clavicle

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French clavicule (“small key, tendril, collarbone”), according to Barnhart, Etymonline, Klein and Merriam-Webster Unabridged,^[2][3][4][5] or directly borrowed from Latin clāvicula (“small key, tendril, bolt”), according to the OED, the Shorter Oxford and Hoad.^[6][7][8] The Latin noun is a diminutive of clāvis (“key”),^[6][3][8][5] which is related to clāvus (“nail”) and claudō (“to shut”)^[4] and comes from Proto-Indo-European *klau- (“hook”).^[3] The sense "collarbone" appears in Medieval Latin about 980, in a translation of Avicenna.^[3][4] Etymonline and Barnhart treat it as a loan translation of Ancient Greek κλείς (kleís, “key, collarbone”),^[3][9] which Etymonline traces to the same root.^[3] As for the reason for the name, Etymonline and Barnhart think of the bone's function as the fastener of the shoulder,^[3][9] other dictionaries of its shape,^[10][11][2] and the OED quotes Littré, who compared it either to the key of a vault or to the form of ancient bolts.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The collarbone: 1615, in H. Crooke's Mikrokosmographia,^[6][2][5] and Etymonline's date of the 1610s agrees.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word has been anatomical in English from its first record, although Latin also used the noun for a tendril or the bolt of a door.^[6][12] The tendril sense did reach English for a while as a botanical term, from 1725 in Sloane to 1750, and Goldsmith used the word in 1774 for the upper part of a spiral shell; both are obsolete.^[6] Johnson (1755) simply gives "the collar bone", with quotations from Browne and Wiseman.^[13] Modern dictionaries extend the term to the matching bone of other vertebrates, including the bones fused into a bird's wishbone.^[5][14]

Timeline

• 1615 – the collarbone.^[6][2][5]
• 1725 – in botany, a tendril (obsolete by 1750).^[6]
• 1774 – in conchology, the upper part of a spiral shell (obsolete).^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Either of the two bones that link the breastbone with the shoulder blade in humans; the collarbone.^[14][5][6]
2. The corresponding bone in other vertebrates, as one of the bones fused into a bird's wishbone.^[14][5]

Word family

• clavicular
• interclavicle

Related words

• clef
• conclave
• enclave
• subclavian
• clavier
• close
• clause

Usage notes

The OED also has a separate and obsolete clavicle, "a wart", known only from 1661 in Lovell and based on a supposed Latin *clāviculus, a diminutive of clāvus (“nail, wart, corn”).^[6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins