chicken hawk

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Dec 20 20:39:49 UTC 2010


At 9:05 PM +0100 12/20/10, Paul Frank wrote:
>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.
>
And there's also the rather different term of sexual art, for an
adult male who "preys on" boys.  Rather more pejorative than "cougar".

LH

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