True Blue --now "CHICKEN"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 14, 2006, at 8:17 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> It may be that the distinction between "chicken" (young) and
> "fowl" (general) was rather unstable from the beginning, with
> "chicken" moving ever closer to "fowl" (gallinaceous) for reasons
> like those Charlie suggests. First the flesh, then the fowl.
>
>   My reading of older English - probably not as extensive as
> Charlie's - is that "chicken" used to be used, even in the U.S., as
> a precise synonym for "chick," not just a "young" fowl but
> specifically an infant fowl. (Inhabitants of Delaware used to call
> themselves "The Blue Hen's Chickens.") As applied to the young of
> other birds, "chicken" seems to have gone extinct long ago (OED's
> last is 1651).

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".

arnold

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