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
i lov chickens