chick

English Online Dictionary. What means chick‎? What does chick mean?

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English chicke, chike, variation of chiken (“chicken", also "chick”), from Old English ċicen, ċycen (“chicken”). Sense of "young woman" dates to at least 1860 (compare chit (“young, pert woman”)). More at chicken.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t͡ʃɪk/
• Rhymes: -ɪk

Noun

chick (plural chicks or (obsolete) chicken)

2. A young bird.

   Synonym: fledgling

   Coordinate term: birdlet
3. A young chicken.
4. (dated, endearing) A young child.
6. (colloquial) A young, typically attractive, woman or teenage girl.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:girl, Thesaurus:woman
7. (military, slang) A friendly fighter aircraft.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Verb

chick (third-person singular simple present chicks, present participle chicking, simple past and past participle chicked)

1. (obsolete) To sprout, as seed does in the ground; to vegetate.
2. To compress the lips and then separate them quickly, resulting in a percussive noise.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Hindustani چق (ciq) / चिक (cik), ultimately from Persian چق (čeq).

Alternative forms

• chik

Noun

chick (plural chicks)

1. (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, [2]

     Then, through a cautiously lifted chick, the old scene stands revealed […]

Synonyms

• chick-blind

Derived terms

• chicked

Further reading

• Henry Yule, A[rthur] C[oke] Burnell (1903), “chick”, in William Crooke, editor, Hobson-Jobson […] , London: John Murray, […], page 193.

Yola

Alternative forms

• chicke

Etymology

From Middle English chike, from Old English ċicen. Cognate with English chick, and Scots schik.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t͡ʃɪk/

Noun

chick (plural chickès)

1. chicken

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 30