Other forms: chickens
A chicken is the farm bird that gives eggs and white meat. Roast chicken, keep chickens, chicken soup.
The female is a hen, the male a cockerel or rooster, and the young a chick. Chicken is the most eaten meat in the world by weight. As an adjective and noun, chicken means cowardly: do not be chicken, chicken out — which is informal and childish. Note the chicken and egg problem, meaning a circular question of which came first; and do not count your chickens before they hatch.
1nounchickenThe farm bird that gives eggs and white meat.
“The chickens wandered around the farmyard, pecking at the grain.”
2adjectivecowardlyCowardly, informally.
“He chickened out at roughly the last minute.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
chicken is a farm bird.
Also accepted in games: hen, rooster
Old English cicen is a diminutive of cock, meaning a little cock. The bird was named as a young one and the word then took over for adults too, which is why hen and rooster had to stay in use.
Middle English
chiken
English, today
chicken
Built from
From Middle English chiken. From Middle English chiken (also as chike > English chick), from Old English ċicen, ċycen (“chicken”), of uncertain origin. Possibly from Proto-West Germanic kiukīn (“chicken”), or alternatively from Proto-West Germanic kukkīn, equivalent to cock + -en. Compare frr schückling (“chicken”), stq Sjuuken (“chicken”), Dutch kuiken (“chick, chicken”), German Low German Küken (“chick”), whence German Küken (“chick”), elevated, obsolete German Küchlein (“chick”) and Old Norse kjúklingr (“chicken”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA