Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A young chicken.
  • noun One of the young of any bird.
  • noun A child.
  • noun Often Offensive A girl or young woman.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To sprout, as seed in the ground; vegetate.
  • To crack.
  • noun A name for the thick juice of the poppy, three pounds of which will make about one pound of opium.
  • noun In India, a screen or curtain made of thin slips of bamboo with very narrow openings between them, allowing the admission of air and light, while excluding the view from the outside: it is hung in doorways and windows, both in houses and tents, and is the original of a kind of blind or shade now common in Europe and America.
  • To peep; cheep; make the characteristic cry of a young chick.
  • noun A chicken; particularly, the young of the domestic hen, and of some other birds, as partridges.
  • noun An abbreviated form of chickeen.
  • noun A crack; a flaw.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A chicken.
  • noun A child or young person; -- a term of endearment.
  • noun slang a young woman; -- often considered offensive.
  • intransitive verb To sprout, as seed in the ground; to vegetate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun zoology A young bird.
  • noun A young chicken.
  • noun slang (Discuss(+) this sense) A young (especially attractive) woman.
  • noun slang A woman.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun young bird especially of domestic fowl
  • noun informal terms for a (young) woman

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English chike, variant of chiken, chicken; see chicken.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English chike, variation of chiken ("chicken"), from Old English ċicen, cycen ("chicken"). Sense of "young woman" first attested in Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927) . More at chicken.

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