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- Aug 7, 2001
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Folk BeliefsWeird Words:
ULs seem to be outnumbering the more traditional folk beliefs in this forum, so to redress the balance here's something copied from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter:
Weird Words: Merrythought
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The forked bone between the neck and breast of a bird.
But that's the wishbone, I almost hear you cry. Indeed it is, but
"merrythought" is the older term for that part of a turkey, chicken
or other fowl served at table. "Wishbone" was created in America;
from the evidence, it seems to have appeared sometime around the 1850s, but has since taken over everywhere. However, "merrythought" was still the more common term in America and Britain until about 1900. Here's an American example, from "Mrs. Goodfellow's Cookery as it Should Be", published in Philadelphia in 1865:
Remove the merrythought and neck bones next, this you
will accomplish by inserting the knife and forcing it
under the bones, raise it and it will readily separate
from the breast.
The name of "wishbone" comes, of course, from the folk custom in
which two people hold its ends and pull, the one left with the
longer piece making a wish. "Merrythought" refers to an older
version of the custom, in which it is assumed that the one left
with the longer piece will get to marry first. So the bone-pulling
ceremony resulted in what were euphemistically called "merry
thoughts" among those taking part. This explains the reference in
"Jack Hinton, the Guardsman", an 1843 novel by the Irish writer
Charles Lever: "Simpering old maids cracked merry thoughts with gay bachelors".
The scientific name for the bone is the "furcula", from the Latin
word that is a diminutive of "furca", a fork. That is actually
also the origin of our "fork" and also turns up in words like
"bifurcated", which the furcula, of course, is.
ULs seem to be outnumbering the more traditional folk beliefs in this forum, so to redress the balance here's something copied from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter:
Weird Words: Merrythought
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The forked bone between the neck and breast of a bird.
But that's the wishbone, I almost hear you cry. Indeed it is, but
"merrythought" is the older term for that part of a turkey, chicken
or other fowl served at table. "Wishbone" was created in America;
from the evidence, it seems to have appeared sometime around the 1850s, but has since taken over everywhere. However, "merrythought" was still the more common term in America and Britain until about 1900. Here's an American example, from "Mrs. Goodfellow's Cookery as it Should Be", published in Philadelphia in 1865:
Remove the merrythought and neck bones next, this you
will accomplish by inserting the knife and forcing it
under the bones, raise it and it will readily separate
from the breast.
The name of "wishbone" comes, of course, from the folk custom in
which two people hold its ends and pull, the one left with the
longer piece making a wish. "Merrythought" refers to an older
version of the custom, in which it is assumed that the one left
with the longer piece will get to marry first. So the bone-pulling
ceremony resulted in what were euphemistically called "merry
thoughts" among those taking part. This explains the reference in
"Jack Hinton, the Guardsman", an 1843 novel by the Irish writer
Charles Lever: "Simpering old maids cracked merry thoughts with gay bachelors".
The scientific name for the bone is the "furcula", from the Latin
word that is a diminutive of "furca", a fork. That is actually
also the origin of our "fork" and also turns up in words like
"bifurcated", which the furcula, of course, is.
