Roots
Dishing out chicken
Deepti

The word ‘chicken’ is related to the Dutch kiekin and is used in three kinds of sense. First, it refers to the domestic fowl that is kept for its meat. Second, it refers to the meat of the above bird. Third, it is used as a verb as in ‘he chickened out of the risky task’ and as an adjective in ‘he was too chicken for the risky task’ to convey the idea of cowardice. And, everyone wants to be a ‘spring chicken’ or ‘young person’.

As a foodstuff, chicken has given umpteen number of dishes like the tandoori chicken, balti chicken, chicken a la king and the chicken-fried steak. Of course, these are just a few globally known delicacies; indigenous cultures everywhere have an infinite number of chicken dishes in their repertoire. Today, the tandoor is known everywhere but earlier, it was called the ‘chicken brick’, an earthenware container for roasting chicken.

The question ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ has given a label to a specific situation; the situation in which each of two things appears necessary to the other. Either it is impossible to say which came first or it appears that neither could ever exist by itself. So, one calls it a chicken-and-egg situation.

Chicken feed, chicken shit and chicken run are terms from the register of poultry farming but they have also taken on the status of metaphors with the passage of time. Chicken feed refers to a paltry sum of money.

The exodus of people from South Africa because of fears for their future is called chicken run. And chicken shit excuses are worthless or contemptible excuses.