collarbone

Etymology

It is formed from English collar + bone.^[2][3][4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Webster's Third trace it to a Middle English (Scots) form colar bane, from colar (“collar”) and bane (“bone”), the latter from Old English bān.^[5][6] Etymonline files it under the hyphenated spelling.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The clavicle: about 1500 in Etymonline.^[2] The OED's first quotation is from before 1600, in a Scots poem printed in Dalyell's Scotish Poems of the 16th Century (1801).^[3][7]

Timeline

• c. 1500 – the clavicle.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to the 15th century, the OED's first quotation is from before 1600, and Dictionary.com dates it 1605–15.^[5][3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. Either of the two bones joining the breastbone to the shoulder blade; the clavicle: She broke her collarbone falling from her bicycle.^[8][5][3][9]

Related words

• collar
• bone
• clavicle

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
7. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
8. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt