Ruling the Roost: What Chicken Idioms Reveal About Us

In my last two posts I’ve suggested how we use animal images – doggy ones – to systematically portray various human situations and emotions. Now, ‘by popular request’, here’s one about chickens.

People on X have already suggested some gallinaceous idioms; my opportunity now is to explore how they illuminate broader themes, just as the doggy ones shed light on aggression, social hierarchy, and so forth.

Here goes.

Hierarchy

is an obvious one, just as it was with dogs, because we all at some stage assess our place in the social order. So it is that we have the pecking order, first used as applied to animals in 1927, in a book titled Social Life in the Animal World. It took only three years for its metaphorical potential to be realised, though it was embraced in quotation marks, thus directly referencing the original, animal meaning.

Perhaps what we call government in human societies is really only a glorified ‘pecking order’!

A thought mightily worth pondering.

To rule the roost (1769) was also suggested, and that’s another one that fits neatly into this category. Like the previous, it plays to the conceptual metaphor, HUMAN HIERARCHY IS ANIMAL HIERARCHY. But here’s the thing: the OED notes that it’s a folk-etymological version of the much older to rule the roast, in use from circa 1500 onwards:

Whatsoeuer ȝe brage ore boste
My mayster ȝet schall reule þe roste.

The OED states that its origin is unknown. Dang! There goes my little mental image of the paterfamilias carving the Sunday roast and thereby being thought of as ruling it. My imagining is no doubt completely anachronistic.

The third suggestion that fits under this heading is henpecked, which moves discussion of hierarchy onto the battle of the sexes, as the OED defines henpecked: ‘Designating a man who is continually criticized or ordered about by his wife or female partner, or (occasionally) his mother, daughter, etc.’

The earliest OED citation is from 1660, which makes one wonder how the phenomenon was described before. Or is it the case that the word concretised the phenomenon? No, of course not, for how else does Leontes taunt Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale than in different but analogous terms:

Thou dotard; thou art woman-tired, unroosted
By thy Dame Partlet here.

‘Unroosted’ means dislodged from the roost, and so from power. It’s an example of HUMAN FAMILIES ARE BIRD FAMILIES, specifically HUMAN COUPLES ARE BIRD COUPLES. ‘tired’ here relates to falconry, where ‘to tire’ describes a bird of prey tugging voraciously at a piece of flesh and so strengthens the image of Antigonus’ domination by his wife. And Dame Partlet is a proverbial name for a hen in Chaucer and later writers.

At a pinch, one could also argue that ruffling sb’s feathers (1829) upsets the social hierarchy, while smoothing ruffled feathers (1796) brings it back into balance.

boldness, arrogance and cowardice

There’s a bit of gender imbalance, as so often happens in metaphors, between the qualities stereotypically assigned to males versus females. Males, in the form of cocks, or roosters as they are more commonly known in the States, can symbolise self-confidence bordering on arrogance. Females in contrast, in the shape of chickens, are generally thought of as cowardly. (Chickens is, incidentally, one of those interesting terms that can cover both sexes or apply to only the female one, according to context.) Being cocksure (1705 in this meaning) or cocky (1768) is not generally considered an admirable trait. This next OED citation has a touch of karma about it:

Once you get cocky about something, life has a way of smacking you in the mouth. (2000)

In similar vein, I love the phrase cock of the walk (1781) for, usually, a man who is dominant or pre-eminent in a given group. But then there’s the proverbial warning, ‘Every cock will crow upon his own dunghill,’ meaning everyone will talk most volubly where they feel comfortable, or about a subject that’s their speciality. It goes all the way back to Seneca the Younger, writing in the first century CE.

In contrast, there’s a mini lexicon of adjectives denoting cowardice or pusillanimity: chicken-hearted (1629), hen-hearted (before 1529), chicken-livered (1804), chicken-spirited (1822) and the most common one, chicken, of 1883 and originally a US use.

Contrasting with that dejection is being cock-a-hoop (1564) about something, that is, elated, overjoyed. Now, what on earth does that hoop element relate to? Apparently it derives from the phrase to set cock on the hoop, meaning to turn the tap on the cask so that drink flows freely, hence, to drink and make merry. Hic!

If you drink too much, however, your mental faculties will be dimmed. In which case you might well get into a flap (1916) about where, for instance, you have left your keys. If there were several of you in the same sad boat, you might run around like headless chickens (1870). These answer to HUMAN BEHAVIOUR IS BIRD BEHAVIOUR.

Finally, it’s not obvious that there’s a conceptual metaphor behind as rare as hen’s teeth (1831 and originally US). But then, not every animal idiom has its assigned conceptual metaphor.

And then there’s the Polish phrase a virtual chum pointed out to me: trafiło się jak ślepej kurze ziarno (‘Even a blind hen can find a seed sometimes’) to point out when someone who isn’t especially lucky has a stroke of luck, usually through no effort of their own.

And as an afterthought, I can’t resist mentioning the wonderful eggcorn of chickens coming home to roast. It makes a great deal of sense, if you think about it.

Malcolm said that the death of Kennedy was a case of the ‘chickens coming home to roast’.

Except that it wasn’t Malcom X who said that, but the person misreporting and eggcorning his comment.

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Finally, to earn your corn has been suggested as an avian metaphor. The OED suggests, however, that those eating the corn are horses.