pullet
English
editEtymology
editFrom Middle English polet, pulet, from Anglo-Norman pullet, Old French poulet (“young chicken”); polette (“young hen”), from poule (“hen”). Doublet of poult. Compare also Middle English pulle.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editpullet (plural pullets)
- A young hen, especially one less than a year old. [from 14th c.]
- Hypernym: poultry
- 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.11:
- They died not because the Pullets would not feed: but because the Devil foresaw their death, he contrived that abstinence in them.
- 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 588:
- The dinner-hour being arrived, Black George carried her up a pullet, the squire himself [...] attending the door.
- 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 187:
- he recommended that the patient [...] should be fed with chicken broth, and suggested that as all the poultry had gone to roost, Maggie would find a fat young pullet an easy capture.
- 1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 195:
- The writer complained that a fox had been the night before and killed three more of his pullets […].
- (slang) A spineless person; a coward.
- (obsolete, slang) A young girl.
Related terms
editTranslations
edityoung hen
|
spineless person — see chicken
See also
editReferences
edit- (young girl): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *peh₂w-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English terms derived from Old French
- English doublets
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ʊlɪt
- Rhymes:English/ʊlɪt/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English slang
- English terms with obsolete senses
- en:Baby animals
- en:Chickens
- en:Female animals
- en:People