Chicken
nounA common domestic fowl kept for its eggs and meat, or the meat from that bird.
How to spell chicken
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce chicken
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does chicken mean?
- nounA common domestic fowl kept for its eggs and meat, or the meat from that bird.
- nounInformal term for a person who lacks courage or is easily frightened.
- verbTo lose one's nerve and withdraw from something, usually followed by 'out'.
Chicken in a sentence
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noun
She roasted a whole chicken for the family dinner.
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noun
His friends called him a chicken for refusing to ride the rollercoaster.
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verb
He tends to chicken out whenever a big decision is needed.
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noun
The recipe calls for a whole chicken and a handful of fresh herbs.
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noun
Nobody wants to be the chicken who backs out of the dare.
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verb
She promised not to chicken out before the interview.
Where does chicken come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Chicken comes from the Old English cicen or cycen, which originally meant a young fowl, that is, a chick rather than the grown bird. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic form related to cock, the word for the male bird, with the ending acting as a diminutive that marked something small or young. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from 'young bird' to the domestic fowl of any age, and then to its meat on the table. The informal sense of 'coward' grew from the bird's reputation for being easily frightened and quick to flee, a usage recorded for centuries in English. The spelling keeps the older -en ending intact, so the word looks longer than its single-syllable relative chick.
How the word is built
- chick (young fowl)
- -en (Old English diminutive suffix)
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