marrowbone n.

"soft tissue found in the interior of bones," late 14c., from Old English mearg "marrow," earlier mærh, from Proto-Germanic *mazga- (source also of Old Norse mergr, Old Saxon marg, Old Frisian merg, Middle Dutch march, Dutch merg, Old High German marg, German Mark "marrow"), from PIE *mozgo- "marrow" (source also of Sanskrit majjan-, Avestan mazga- "marrow," Old Church Slavonic mozgu, Lithuanian smagenės "brain"). Figurative sense of "inmost or central part, inner substance, essence" is attested from mid-14c.

Middle English bon, from Old English ban "bone, tusk, hard animal tissue forming the substance of the skeleton; one of the parts which make up the skeleton," from Proto-Germanic *bainan (source also of Old Frisian and Old Saxon ben, Old Norse bein, Danish ben, German Bein). Absent in Gothic, with no cognates outside Germanic (the common PIE root is *ost-); the Norse, Dutch, and German cognates also mean "shank of the leg," and this is the main meaning in Modern German, but English seems never to have had this sense.

To work (one's) fingers to the bone is from 1809. To have a bone to pick (1560s) is an image of a dog struggling to crack or gnaw a bone (to pick a bone "strip a bone by picking or gnawing" is attested from late 15c.); to be a bone of contention (1560s) is of two dogs fighting over a bone; the images seem to have become somewhat merged. Also compare bones.

Bone-china, which is mixed with bone-dust, is so called by 1854. Bone-shaker (1874) was an old name for the early type of bicycle, before rubber tires.