pullet
nounUK /ˈpʊlɪt/
Etymology From Middle English polet, pulet, from Anglo-Norman pullet, Old French poulet (“young chicken”); polette (“young hen”), from poule (“hen”), from Vulgar Latin pulla, feminine form of pullus. Doublet of poult. Compare also Middle English pulle. By surface analysis, pull(us) + -et.
1
A young hen, especially one less than a year old.
- They died not because the Pullets would not feed: but because the Devil foresaw their death, he contrived that abstinence in them.1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.11:
- The dinner-hour being arrived, Black George carried her up a pullet, the squire himself [...] attending the door.1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 588:
3 more examples
- he recommended that the patient [...] should be fed with chicken broth, and suggested that as all the poultry had gone to roost, Maggie would find a fat young pullet an easy capture.1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 187:
- The writer complained that a fox had been the night before and killed three more of his pullets […].1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 195:
- “Mrs. Boast can’t have got all these from one hatching,” [Ma] said. “I do believe there’s not more than two cockerels among them.” “The Boasts have got such a head-start with chickens, likely they’re planning to eat friers this summer,” said Pa. “It may be she took a few cockerels out of this flock, looking on them as meat.” “Yes, and replaced them with pullets that will be layers,” Ma guessed. “It would be Mrs. Boast all over. A more generous woman never lived.”1941, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie:
2
Slang A spineless person; a coward.