True Blue --now "CHICKEN"

[Charles Doyle]

Well, there WAS that goose who stepped onto a crowded elevator and got peopled most fowly . . . .

I think, in my colonial taxonomy, (even after Bethany's posting) the term "fowl" could include ALL domesticated birds raised for food--pheasants, pigeons, maybe fat swans (to accommodate the palate of Chaucer's pilgrim-monk)--and perhaps even game birds.  Not sure about ostriches.

It IS a curious state of affairs when we extraordinarily learned English professors have to look up the key words WITHIN O.E.D. definitions (sort of tacit cross-references) to understand the parochial British dialects of those old guys with their white beards.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:58:09 -0800
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: Re: True Blue --now "CHICKEN"
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
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>
>Q: Is a barnyard goose a "fowl" in the U.S. (No puns, smart guy!)  If not, why not?
>  Who makes these rules?
>
>  JL

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If I may speak for Sir James Murray and the other editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, "Gotcha!"

    "Fowl, sb....3. The prevailing sense: A ‘barn-door fowl’, a domestic cock or hen; a bird of the genus Gallus. In the U.S. applied also to ‘a domestic duck or turkey’ (Cent. Dict.)."

 So its only you (I mean us - I mean we) Colonials who'd be confused.

JL

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>
>Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
>I.e., 1827 for CHICKEN n.1.1.d, "A domestic fowl of any age"? That seems like a poor definition. Turkeys and ducks are domestic fowl, but they aren't referred to as chickens.
>
>Why, in the OED (s.v. CHICKEN "Additions Series 1993") does CHICKEN-BREAST gain an entry, when "chicken-leg," "chicken-wing," and the names of other edible chicken parts do not?
>
>--Charlie
>__________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:54:29 -0800
>>From: Jonathan Lighter
>>Subject: Re: True Blue
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>>
>>Assuming that "ram-chicken" simply means "rooster," it antedates the modern use of "chicken" in OED (1812) by about two generations.
>>
>> JL

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