Poultry

How to spell poultry

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce poultry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does poultry mean?

1. nounDomestic birds such as chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, kept for their meat or eggs.

Poultry in a sentence

• The farm raises poultry for both eggs and meat.

• She always cooks poultry to a safe internal temperature.

Where does poultry come from?

Language of origin: French

Poultry came into Middle English in the 1300s from the Old French word pouletrie, which described chickens and other farmyard birds taken together as a group. That word was built on poulet, meaning 'young fowl' or 'chicken', a diminutive of poule, 'hen', which in turn goes back to the Latin pulla, the feminine of pullus, meaning 'a young animal' or 'chick'. The same Latin root quietly survives in the English words pullet (a young hen) and poult (a young turkey or chicken), and the modern French poulet still means chicken on a menu. The collective ending -ry, also seen in jewellery and machinery, signals a whole class of things rather than a single bird. The spelling keeps the French ou and the silent-looking l from poulet, which is exactly where writers trip and reach for the unrelated word paltry.

How the word is built

• poult (young fowl, from Old French poulet)
• -ry (collective noun suffix)