chicken hawk

Paul Frank paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU
Mon Dec 20 20:05:35 UTC 2010


A surprising omission in the OED is "chicken hawk." The only
definition I can find is this: "chicken-hawk n. chiefly U.S. any of
various hawks that kill chickens."

The Wikipedia defines chickenhawk as "Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk
and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in the United States to
criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly
supports a war or other military action, yet who actively avoided
military service when of age." The term has been around at least since
the 1980s.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
Espace de l'Europe 16
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

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