chicken hawk

[Michael Newman]

That might be a little out of date now since "chicken" seems to have died away. It has been mostly displaced by "twink" as a term for really young gay guys. However,  the connotations between the terms are a bit different. Chicken implied underage; whereas twinks can be older maybe up  to early 20s, but they are boyish looking and thin and relatively hairless.

However, back in the day, I do remember, oh never mind.


Michael Newman
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Queens College/CUNY
michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu



On Dec 20, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: chicken hawk
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org