"chicken little"

[Jonathan Lighter]

You mean it wasn't a wolf that cried "wolf"?  I've heard them on TV. When they're not howling, they're crying "wolf ! wolf !"  It would scare anybody.

  Cf. the now-extinct (great) auk, which also cried its own name.

  JL



Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: "chicken little"
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In news reports about the Colorado town that's being threatened with an "avalanche" of toxic water, a local official is quoted: "We're not just crying 'chicken little' here."

In the old story, it was Chicken Little (or Chicken Lickin') himself who did the "crying"--viz., "The sky is falling!" However, a Google search yields several hundred instances of the construction "cry 'chicken little.'"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_re_us/mining_town_threatened

--Charlie
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