chick
See also: Chick
English
Etymology 1
From Middle English chicke, chike, variation of chiken (“chicken", also "chick”), from Old English ċicen, ċycen (“chicken”). Sense of "young woman" first attested in Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927) [1]. More at chicken.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /t͡ʃɪk/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ɪk
Noun
chick (plural chicks or (obsolete) chicken)
- A young bird.
- A young chicken.
- (term of endearment) A young child.
- (slang, often derogatory) A young, especially attractive, woman or teenage girl.
- Three cool chicks / Are walking down the street / Swinging their hips — song "Three Cool Cats" by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
- 1927, Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry:
- He had determined that marriage now would cramp his advancement in the church and that, anyway, he didn't want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick, who would be of no help in impressing rich parishioners.
- 2004, Tess Pendergrass, Bad moon rising:
- I can't believe you've got a hot chick in that ratty apartment with you.
Synonyms
- (young bird): fledgling
- See also Thesaurus:girl
- See also Thesaurus:woman
Coordinate terms
- (young bird): birdlet
Derived terms
Translations
young bird
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young chicken
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young woman
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Verb
chick (third-person singular simple present chicks, present participle chicking, simple past and past participle chicked)
References
- Etymology of chick in the Online Etymology Dictionary
Noun
chick (plural chicks)
- (India, Pakistan) A screen or blind made of finely slit bamboo and twine, hung in doorways or windows.
- 1890, Rudyard Kipling, Letter to William Canton, 5 April, 1890, in Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis (eds.) Writings on writing by Rudyard Kipling, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 34,
- Then, through a cautiously lifted chick, the old scene stands revealed […]
- 1905, A. C. Newcombe, Village, Town, and Jungle Life in India, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, Chapter VII p. 106,
- It is not uncommon at meal-time to see the table servants chasing the sparrows about the room, endeavouring to drive them out while some one holds up the "chick" or bamboo net which covers the doorway.
- 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days, Chapter 2,
- […] at this time of day all the verandas were curtained with green bamboo chicks.
- 1999, Kevin Rushby, Chasing the Mountain of Light: Across India on the Trail of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, New York: St. Martin's Press, Chapter 10, p. 216,
- Outside I could hear the bamboo chick tapping on the door like a blind man's stick on a kerbstone.
- 1890, Rudyard Kipling, Letter to William Canton, 5 April, 1890, in Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis (eds.) Writings on writing by Rudyard Kipling, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 34,
Synonyms
Yola
References
- J. Poole W. Barnes, A Glossary, with Some Pieces of Verse, of the Old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy (1867)
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