Meanings
plural collarbones · alternative collar-bone · alternative collar bone
- The bone joining the shoulder and the breastbone.
The pragmatic journalist’s daughter would, and did, explain these “memories” as the work of an imagination hypersensitized by her father’s recent death, but a detail in one letter will not be dismissed. Robert Frobisher mentions a comet-shaped birthmark between his shoulder blade and collarbone.
2004, David Mitchell, “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”, in Cloud Atlas, →ISBN, page 120Synonyms: clavicle
Synonyms & antonyms
nounThe bone joining the shoulder and the breastbone.
More synonyms by meaning
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Middle Englishcolar bane
- Englishcollarbone
From Middle English colar bane; equivalent to collar + bone.
More words from Middle English
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
collarbone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/collarbone
“collarbone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/collarbone. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “collarbone,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/collarbone.
Source: collarbone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.