pullet

pullet

English

Etymology

From Middle English polet, pulet, from Anglo-Norman pullet, Old French poulet (“young chicken”); polette (“young hen”), from poule (“hen”). Doublet of poult.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpʊlɪt/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʊlɪt

Noun

pullet (plural pullets)

1. A young hen, especially one less than a year old. [from 14th c.]
   • 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 1973, p. 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 2005, p. 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 2013, p. 195:

     The writer complained that a fox had been the night before and killed three more of his pullets […].

2. (slang) A spineless person; a coward.
3. (obsolete, slang) A young girl.

Related terms

• poultry

Translations

young hen

Afrikaans: jong hen Arabic: please add this translation if you can Armenian: վառեկ (hy) (vaṙek) Bulgarian: пиле (bg) n (pile), ярка (bg) f (jarka) Burmese: please add this translation if you can Catalan: polla (ca) f Central Atlas Tamazight: ⵜⴰⵛⵉⵛⴰⵡⵜ f (tašišawt) Chechen: меъ (meʔ) Cherokee: please add this translation if you can Chinese: Mandarin: 小母雞／小母鸡 (xiǎo mǔjī) Classical Nahuatl: ichpōchtōtolin Esperanto: kokidino Finnish: kananpoika (fi) French: poulette (fr) f Galician: pola f Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Hühnchen (de) n Greek: πουλάδα (el) f (pouláda) Hausa: sā̀garā f Hebrew: פַּרְגִּית‎ (he) f (pargít) Hindi: please add this translation if you can Hungarian: jérce (hu) Ido: hanyuno (io), hanyunino (io) Italian: pollastra (it) f Japanese: 若いめんどり (わかいめんどり, wakai mendori) Khmer: មាន់ញីជំទង់ (moan ñii cumtʊəng) Korean: please add this translation if you can Luxembourgish: Pëll f Macedonian: јарица f (jarica) Norman: poulette (Jersey) Persian: please add this translation if you can Portuguese: franga (pt) f Romanian: puică (ro) f Russian: моло́дка (ru) f (molódka), ку́рочка (ru) f (kúročka) Sindhi: please add this translation if you can Spanish: polla (es) f Swedish: unghöna Tashelhit: ⵜⴰⵛⵉⵛⴰⵡⵜ f (tašišawt) Turkish: please add this translation if you can Urdu: please add this translation if you can Walloon: poyete (wa) f

spineless person — see chicken

References

• (young girl): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary