Chicken

subs. (thieves’).—A pint pot. Cf., HENS AND CHICKENS and CAT AND KITTENS.

  1851.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I., p. 276. The HENS AND CHICKENS, of the low lodging-houses are the publican’s pewter measures; the bigger vessels are hens, the smaller CHICKENS.

  NO CHICKEN, adv. phr. (common).—Elderly. [The term CHICKEN is often applied to children.]

  1720.  SWIFT, Birthday Poem to Stella.

  1738.  SWIFT, Polite Conversation (conv. i). I swear she’s NO CHICKEN; she’s on the wrong side of thirty if she be a day.

  1742.  FIELDING, Joseph Andrews, bk. II., ch. ix. Adams, who was NO CHICKEN, and could bear a drubbing as well as any boxing champion in the universe.

  1771.  SMOLLETT, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, l., 68. The knight swore he was NO SUCH CHICKEN, but a tough old rogue, that would live long enough to plague all his neighbours.

  1717–1797.  HORACE WALPOLE, Letters, III., 308. I made a visit yesterday to the Abbess of Panthemont, General Oglethorpe’s niece, and NO CHICKEN.

  1859.  G. A. SALA, Gaslight and Daylight, ch. v. I am NO CHICKEN (though not the gray-headed old fogy that insulting Squirrel presumes to call me).

  TO COUNT ONE’S CHICKENS BEFORE THEY ARE HATCHED, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To reckon beforehand upon a successful issue. The Latins said, ‘Don’t sing your song of triumph before you have won the victory’ (ante victoriam canere triumphum). ‘Don’t hallo till you are out of the wood’ has a similar meaning, and in French, to lose a game as good as won = la perdre belle. The expression was doubtless popularised by Butler in his Hudibras [see quot., 1664], but it was known long prior.

  1579.  GOSSON, The Ephemerides of Phialo, 19. I woulde not have him TO COUNTE HIS CHICKENS so soone BEFORE THEY BE HATCHT.  [M.]

  1664.  BUTLER, Hudibras, II., iii., 923.