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YOU may remember a couple of weeks ago, I wrote of animal expressions and included the old favourite: ‘running around like a chicken with its head cut off’. Well, I recently received an email from a delightful gentleman who has requested I refer to him as Mr B.

Mr B wrote to me after the ‘animal expression’ column and told me how he thought it odd that there are so few expressions relating to chickens. I replied saying that I thought there may actually be quite a lot. Mr B was quickly back to tell me he’d come up with three and threw down the gauntlet to name more – the rules were that I couldn’t cheat and look up books, but just had to come up with them off the top of my head.

So, challenge accepted, I headed to the kitchen, made a cup of tea for my lovely husband and one for me and sat down with him at our kitchen table with the back of an envelope and a biro.

The length of time taken to enjoy the tea yielded 29 expressions – plus one if I’m allowed to count ‘chook with its head cut off’ again. I’m reasonably sure there would be more, but these were just those with which I’m familiar and within a prescribed time frame. Why would there be so many? Well, long before the Industrial Revolution oozed out both a pall of smoke and a thick layer of soot, England was an agrarian society. People – regular people not the ‘upper crust’ – lived a pastoral life farming, keeping cattle, sheep, pigs, raising fowl of many feathers. When they spoke, they spoke illustrative language from the life with which they were familiar.

In 1546 John Heywood published his Book of Proverbs in which were hundreds of expressions many of which survive to this day – ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’, ‘a bird in the hand’ and the ‘early bird catches the worm’ are but three examples.

So it is that we come to ‘chicken expressions’. ‘Wake with the chickens’ – from 1300s to express the fact that farmers must wake when their animals do so chickens wake at first light – early indeed.

‘Go to bed with the chickens’ – it stands to reason that if you’re going to have to get cracking from first light, then you’d best get to bed early to ensure that you’ve had enough sleep. The earliest a chicken goes to bed is sunset.

‘A hen with one chick’ – mother hens will usually have a brood of chickens, but a hen who successfully hatches only one, will be overprotective and constantly overseeing all the chicken does to keep it safe. In modern parlance, a ‘hen with one chick’ might be called a ‘helicopter mum’ – constantly hovering. This attests to the 12th century.

‘Chicken hearted’ – this derogatory expression suggests that the person labelled thus is a cowardly, frightened person. Chickens tend to get very loud when startled, but will quickly run away if threatened. We also know this expression in its shortened form: ‘chicken’! You may have also heard ‘chicken out’, as in someone is such a coward, that you know they will ‘chicken out’ of doing something before they even try.

‘Chicken feed’ – chickens eat grain and the amount they require does not represent a high cost. Therefore, if you are paid ‘chicken feed’, you’re not paid much at all. This one comes from mid-west America in the 1920s.

‘If it ain’t chickens it’s feathers’ – I learnt this one from an American exchange student when I was at school and I love it. It’s American, mid-west in origin and traces back to the mid-1850s.

In English we’re more likely to say ‘if it’s not one thing, it’s the other’ – meaning from all the things we know we fixed, if something is wrong with something, when it fails, it must be because of either A or B. Valencia also taught me the expression ‘sneak a sunrise past a rooster’ – meaning a rooster’s job is to make his call at sun up and nothing is going to stop him for welcoming the dawn with a ‘cock-a-doodledoo’. If something is impossible to do, you may as well try to sneak a sunrise past a rooster. It’s American farming mid-west and appears in print in the 1930s. It may just be my favourite ‘chicken idiom’.

‘Winner, winner, chicken dinner’ – this one is fairly popular so of course there is more than one claimant. One claims that the actors appearing in shows in London’s West End used to go for supper at a little tea room nearby that stayed open for the theatre crowd. If it had been a full house, the players got a bonus and bought the special roast chicken dinner, if not, it was tea and sandwiches. The other claimant is from America’s Las Vegas. At Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, a blackjack dealer on the low table ($1 and $2 bets) would call out ‘Winner, winner chicken dinner’ if the player won $2 as that was the price of the chicken dinner blue plate special. I like them both – you choose which you prefer.

‘Hen party’ – in the 1620s the word ‘hen’ was first used as slang to describe women. By the early 1800s it was being used to describe any social gathering of women.

By the early 1970s when sexual freedom changed social standards in the UK, hen parties were held as the last night of sexual freedom for the bride-to-be before she became a one man woman.

‘He who wants eggs must endure cackling’ – this expression is the oldest and travels through time from the Ancient Greeks. A writer called Leonidas used the expression to describe a wealthy man who was beset by constant worries about robbers stealing away all his wealth.

The expression means simply that if you would enjoy the good part of something, then you ought to be prepared to put up with the less desirable elements.

‘To take someone under your wing’ – just as a mother hen tucks her chickens under her wings to keep them safe while they all sleep at night and keeps them close during the day to teach them how to feed and how to stay safe, someone in a business setting may take a less experienced employee ‘under their wing’ and show them the ropes.

I’m beaten by word limit but if you’d like some homework, have a think on these: Cock of the walk; Cock and bull story; Pecking order; Rare as hen’s teeth; A chicken and egg situation; Rubber chicken dinner; Write like chicken scratch; Henpecked; If you want to make omelettes, you’ve got to break some eggs; Chickens come home to roost; Don’t put all your eggs in one basket; Don’t count your chickens before they hatch; To lay an egg (make a big error); and Fox in the henhouse.

Yes indeed, there are many expressions about chickens. Thanks for emailing me Mr B.

Have you a word or phrase that’s troubling you? Is there an event about which you’d like information? Would you like assistance with a question you can’t shake? Keep that curiosity up everyone and keep sending those questions in. If you’ve a question on the origin of just about anything really, please give me a hoy!

JB, 4812 in Bulletin. What makes you think anti-vaxxers don’t sign in to check-in apps. My daughter is an anti-vax but checks in everywhere. And many of her friends are not vaccinated but also use check in apps. The difference is getting vaccinated is a choice and check-in is not if you care about others. BOB, 4818

After reading all the articles regarding youth crime and experiencing it first hand, my wife was subjected to an attempted bag snatch at the Willows. I suggest that all women and men for that matter carry a whistle with them, three blasts on the whistle means help and this strategy most times makes the criminals disperse.

RALPH, WEST END

Labor linked pollster Redbridge has Palmer’s UAP at 17 per cent in western Sydney seats Macquarie (Labor) and Liberal held Lindsay and Banks. If this is even remotely accurate on federal election day, then Palmer’s preferences throughout Australia and big advertising budget, may well again decide the government – Liberal/nat or Labor. My gut feeling is UAP’S

Vac or no vac, that is the question. Sooner or later things will be opened up and this virus is going to do what they do. Realistically it’s no one’s fault how their body’s immune system reacts. Plenty of time for people to make a decision, now just open everything up and let the snow land where it falls. People can’t blame anyone for anything, it’s a virus.

overall polling will be single digits, and will not deliver one single Senate spot, but he could be kingmaker again. With UAP preferences 80 per cent to the Coalition last time round, that isn’t good for Albo’s PM ambitions. PEDRO, CRANBROOK

Ron. Pipeline, pipeline, what pipeline? I asked two govt spin doctors about it and was told by Sgt Schultz “I knozze nussinck” & Basil Fawlty “Don’t mention za pipeline”.

THE B OF DOUGLAS

Congratulations to the Barrier Reef Orchestra for their 21st anniversary performance on Saturday night at the Civic Theatre. And combined with the Choral Society performing

parts of Les Miserables, nothing could be better. WARREN, A’DALE

If our country is so great as some people think then why are there so many people homeless and out of a job? The do gooders need to rethink their programs.

GG, 4818

Went to Covid centre to get my two shots, sat for a while watching families coming and going. Holy hell what overweight, unhealthy people Townsvillagers have become. NG, ROSSLEA

Noticed in the paper regarding a 12 and 13 year old caught riding a stolen scissor lift at 11pm. Both released on police bail. I wonder if they were taken back to their parents or caretaker and if they were then asked why these two were out at that hour. Probably not as the police would probably get into trouble from above.

GEOFF ALICE RIVER, 4817

Coles and Woolies both want to go zero by 2050. Maybe they could start with the length of their dockets. Between them they use a small forest per day.

BILL, 4850