Poultry Metaphors

One of the artifacts of keeping chickens and ducks in our backyard, is that I’ve come to realise what a large number of poultry based metaphors there are in the English language, and I get to experience the following sayings in their original context …

  • chicken brain
  • ruffled feathers
  • pecking order
  • like water off a ducks back
  • don’t count your chickens before they hatch
  • rotten egg / good egg
  • broody
  • clipped wings
  • rule the roost
  • come home to roost
  • treading on eggshells
  • henpecked

One metaphor that I haven’t yet seen in its original form, and which I do not intend to enact is …

  • running around like a chook with its head cut off

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