Meaning
To withdraw from a planned or promised course of action because of fear or loss of nerve, especially at the last minute. Informal, with a teasing or contemptuous edge. Originally American and now common across all main varieties of English. Informal and mildly contemptuous or teasing; out of place in formal writing. Regional use: American English in origin; now General English.
Origin
The phrasal verb is twentieth-century American slang built on the much older figurative 'chicken' for a coward: 'chicken-heartes' appears in 1602 (Blurt, Master-Constable), and Shakespeare's Cymbeline (1611) has soldiers 'flye Chickens'. That cowardly sense rests on a hen-and-cock contrast documented from the 1400s: 'henne-harte' occurs before 1450 in the York plays and 'henherted' in Skelton by 1529, with the hen standing for timidity and the cock for spirit. For the phrasal verb itself, the OED's first citation is 'chickened out' in Utah's Salt Lake Telegram of 19 February 1931, about a football team that avoided a fixture; Green's Dictionary of Slang marks the verb as originally US, with its earliest citation from Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang (1934). It spread through mid-century American speech and is now general English.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- chicken out of something
- chickened out
- chickening out
Usage Examples
- We booked the parachute jump in March, and by July half the group had chickened out.
- Do not chicken out now; the interview is in twenty minutes.
- She nearly chickened out of confronting the landlord, then knocked on his door anyway.