Anyone who refuse adouble - weenie dareis liable to be labeled a chicken . How pawl found their way into daring refinement remain a bit of a mystery — but the reasoncowardsare send for “ chicken ” is slimly clear .
accord to theOxford English Dictionary , the earliest written instance of the wordchickenin the recreant sense amount from William Shakespeare’sCymbeline , circa 1616 . " Forthwith they wing , Chickens , ” he wrote , describing soldiers fleeing a battlefield .
But asGrammarphobia reports , domestic fowl had been consort with an absence of courageousness long before the seventeenth one C . One play from around 1450describeda Sir Noel Pierce Coward as a “ henne - harte , ” and poet John Skeltonlikenedsome invertebrate courtier to “ hen - hearted cuckolds ” in his poemWhy Come Ye Nat to Courtecirca1529 . Hens may have seemed especially timid because roosters were typically characterized as plucky . If you were a leader , a unfearing warrior , or just a dominant bearing in the mid-16th C , someone might call you a “ cock ” ( as a compliment ) . And when people first begin using the termhento tag end submissive or cowardly folks in the 1600s , they were often juxtapose it withcock .
Take , for illustration , the closing stanza of a late 17th - century ballad known asTaylor ’s Lamentation :
“ Ever since then she hold such a sway , That I am forc’d her law of nature to obey . She is the Cock and I am the Hen , This is my case , Oh ! pity me then . ”
The sexist subtext here is n’t exactly hidden : Femalechickens , like distaff world , are characterized as subdued and faint - hearted , take cues from their valiant and powerful manly counterparts . Any time the script is flipped , pity is in order for the poor humankind . as luck would have it , the less gendered phrase ( hen and roosters are allchickens ) won out over fourth dimension , though it ’s not completely light why . Chickenmeaningfool — which may have been an branch ofgoose - as - saphead — first pop demonstrate up in mark around 1600 . So it seems potential that the coward intension caught on part because the term also worked as a more general affront , too .
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