True Blue --now "CHICKEN"

[Joel S. Berson]

I hadn't read this when I wrote:

At 11/14/2006 01:48 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>i'm aware of a later development, in which "chicken" expanded its age
>range at the expense of "fowl", at least with reference to the meat.
>when my wife and i lived in cambridge, mass., some forty years ago,
>we sometimes shopped at the Star Market in Watertown, which had a
>poultry department that offered both "chicken" and "fowl"; fowl was
>the meat of distinctly old poultry (very desirable for making stock
>-- which was, of course, called "chicken stock"), and the stuff
>labeled just  "chicken" was everything else.  well, it was all
>"chicken", and "fowl" was a special type, like "pullet" or
>"broiler"/"broiling chicken".

Ah, pullet -- the three ages of chicken (apologies to the Bard):

OED2 has "1. A young (domestic) fowl, between the ages of chicken and
mature fowl; but formerly often used more loosely; spec. and techn. a
young hen from the time she begins to lay till the first moult, after
which she is a full-grown hen or fowl."

Joel

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