Other forms: chicks
A chick is a baby bird, especially a young chicken — small, yellow and fluffy. The chicks hatched on Tuesday. A hen and six chicks.
It is used for the young of any bird, not only chickens: a penguin chick, an eagle chick. The informal sense meaning a young woman is dated and generally unwelcome, and a learner should recognise it rather than use it. Note chickpea, which has nothing to do with chickens and comes from Latin cicer, and chick lit, which is a genre label that many of the writers so labelled dislike.
1nounchickA baby bird.
“All four chicks survived the first week.”
2nounyoungA young chicken.
“The chicks are kept under a lamp for a fortnight.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
chick is a young bird.
Chick is a shortening of chicken, and chicken is Old English cicen, which originally meant a young fowl. The short form is younger than the long one, which is unusual — most such pairs go the other way.
Old English
ċicen
Middle English
chicke
English, today
chick
Built from
From Middle English chicke, chike, variation of chiken (“chicken", also "chick”), from Old English ċicen, ċycen (“chicken”). Sense of "young woman" dates to at least 1860 (compare chit (“young, pert woman”)). More at chicken.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA