What is "chicken"

Chicken \Chick"en\, n. [AS. cicen, cyceun, dim. of coc cock; akin to LG. kiken, k["u]ken, D. Kieken, kuiken, G. k["u]chkein. See Cock the animal.]

1. A young bird or fowl, esp. a young barnyard fowl.

2. A young person; a child; esp. a young woman; a maiden; same as spring chicken. ``Stella is no chicken.''
   --Swift.

   Chicken cholera, a contagious disease of fowls; -- so called because first studied during the prevalence of a cholera epidemic in France. It has no resemblance to true cholera.

Old English cicen (plural cicenu) "young fowl," which by early Middle English had came to mean "young chicken," then later any chicken, from Proto-Germanic *kiukinam (cognates: Middle Dutch kiekijen, Dutch kieken, Old Norse kjuklingr, Swedish kyckling, German Küken "chicken"), from root *keuk- (echoic of the bird's sound and possibly also the root of cock (n.1)) + diminutive suffixes.\n

\nApplied to the young of other bird species from early 13c. Adjective sense of "cowardly" is at least as old as 14c. (compare hen-herte "a chicken-hearted person," mid-15c.). As the name of a game of danger to test courage, it is first recorded 1953. Chicken feed "paltry sum of money" is by 1897, American English slang; literal use (it is made from the from lowest quality of grain) by 1834. Chicken lobster "young lobster," is from c.1960s, American English, apparently from chicken in its sense of "young." Generic words for "chicken" in Indo-European tend to be extended uses of "hen" words, as hens are more numerous among domestic fowl, but occasionally they are from words for the young, as in English and in Latin pullus.

"to back down or fail through cowardice," 1943, U.S. slang, from chicken (n.), almost always with out (adv.).

1. cowardly n. 1 (context countable English) A domestic fowl, ''Gallus gallus'', especially when young 2 (context uncountable English) The meat from this bird eaten as food. 3 (context countable slang English) A coward. 4 (context countable gay slang English) A young, attractive, slim man, usually having little body hair. ''Compare chickenhawk'' 5 (context countable slang English) A young or inexperienced person. 6 A confrontational game in which the participants move toward each other at high speed (usually in automobiles); the player who turns first to avoid colliding into the other is the chicken (i.e., the loser.) 7 The game of dare. v

2. 1 (context intransitive English) To avoid as a result of fear. 2 (context intransitive English) To develop physical or other characteristics resembling a chicken's, for example, bumps on the skin.

adj. easily frightened [syn: chickenhearted, lily-livered, white-livered, yellow, yellow-bellied]

1. n. the flesh of a chicken used for food [syn: poulet, volaille]

2. a domestic fowl bred for flesh or eggs; believed to have been developed from the red jungle fowl [syn: Gallus gallus]

3. a person who lacks confidence, is irresolute and wishy-washy [syn: wimp, crybaby]

4. a foolhardy competition; a dangerous activity that is continued until one competitor becomes afraid and stops

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a type of domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the red junglefowl. It is one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a population of more than 19 billion as of 2011. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs.

Genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in Southeast-, East-, and South Asia, but with the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in the Indian subcontinent. From India, the domesticated chicken was imported to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the fifth century BC. Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the "bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III. The chicken genome has changed less from feathered ancestors eradicated by the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event than those of other sequenced avian dinosaurs.

Chicken is a 2001 Irish short film directed by Barry Dignam about the way adolescent males sometimes redirect their feelings of affection for each other into often violent or competitive activities such as games of chicken.

Chicken is a type of domesticated bird. See also Chicken (food).

Chicken, chickens, or the chicken may also refer to:

CHICKEN is a compiler and interpreter for the Scheme programming language that compiles Scheme code to standard C. It is mostly R5RS compliant and offers many extensions to the standard. The newer R7RS standard is supported through an extension library. CHICKEN is free software available under the BSD license. It is implemented mostly in Scheme, with some parts in C for performance or to make embedding into C programs easier.

"Chicken" is a song by The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, released as the fourth single from their debut album Hörse of the Dög. It was played often on MTV Rocks (formerly MTV2 Europe) and Kerrang!. The cover of the single features artwork by Buzz Parker, creator of Emily Strange. The song was used in Nike's May 2012 commercial My Time Is Now.

The game of chicken, also known as the hawk-dove game or snowdrift game, is a model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while it is for both players beneficial if the other player yields, their own optimal choice depends on what their opponent is doing: if their opponent yields, the player should not, but if the opponent fails to yield, the player should.

The name "chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a " chicken," meaning a coward; this terminology is most prevalent in political science and economics. The name "Hawk-Dove" refers to a situation in which there is a competition for a shared resource and the contestants can choose either conciliation or conflict; this terminology is most commonly used in biology and evolutionary game theory. From a game-theoretic point of view, "chicken" and "hawk-dove" are identical; the different names stem from parallel development of the basic principles in different research areas. The game has also been used to describe the mutual assured destruction of nuclear warfare, especially the sort of brinkmanship involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Chicken can be used, usually by gay men referring to other gay men, to mean a young gay man or young-appearing gay man—stereotypically describing an adolescent or pre-adolescent youth.

Author Bruce Rodgers defines the term as "1. any boy under the age of consent, heterosexual, fair of face, and unfamiliar with homosexuality ("So many chickens were flapping around that I thought we were touring Colonel Sanders' plantation”) 2. juvenile, youthful, young-looking." Others have defined it as a young man who engages in sex for money or favors.

In the subculture of the gay community which uses handkerchiefs or bandannas as a code, people who identify as "Chicken" wear a Kewpie doll in their left back pocket. Those who are interested in young men - referred to as chickenhawks—are denoted in the hanky code as wearing one on the right.

The term has existed in the gay vernacular for many decades, and is still used today. David Henry Sterry, a former prostitute turned actor and director, titled his 2002 memoir, Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent. Author Philip Herbst traces its origin to the 19th century, where it was used to describe the youngest sailors on a ship, who were often used for sexual purposes.

Chicken is L.A. rock band Ednaswap's first and only EP. It was recorded after the band left Eastwest Records and was signed to Island Records, and came out a year before their full-length Island debut, Wacko Magneto.

Chicken is a 1982 computer game for the Atari 8-bit series written by Mike Potter and distributed by Synapse Software.

The game is modified version of the Atari arcade game Avalanche, replacing the buckets and boulders with a hen trying to catch her eggs.

An unrelated game, also known as Chicken, was a type-in program in the first issue of Antic Magazine, but this was a clone of the game Frogger.