chicken

 
Pronunciation: /ˈtʃɪkɪn/

noun

  • 1a domestic fowl kept for its eggs or meat, especially a young one: rationing was still in force and most people kept chickens
  • [mass noun] meat from a chicken: roast chicken
  • 2 [mass noun] informal a game in which the first person to lose their nerve and withdraw from a dangerous situation is the loser: he was killed by a car after he lay in the road playing chicken
  • [count noun] a coward.

adjective

[predic.] informal
  • cowardly: I was too chicken to go to court

verb

[no object] (chicken out) informal
  • withdraw from or fail in something through lack of nerve: the referee chickened out of giving a penalty

Phrases

chicken-and-egg

denoting a situation in which each of two things appears to be necessary to the other: it’s a chicken-and-egg situation where men don’t come forward because there’s no research to report and until they come forward research isn’t forthcoming

don't count your chickens before they're hatched

see count1.

like a headless chicken

informal in a panic-stricken and unthinking manner: players were running about like headless chickens, going in different directions

Origin:

Old English cīcen, cȳcen, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch kieken and German Küchlein, and probably also to cock1