Learn English – Normans vs. Saxons: cow = beef, sheep = mutton, chicken =

The story goes that after the Norman invasion of England, the words in English for prepared foods took on their French equivalents. The Saxon serfs bred the cows, sheep, and swine, which when served on gilded plates to their Norman rulers were referred to as beef, mutton, and pork respectively, a practice that continues to this day.

My question is, why was the humble chicken, a word which does not have a French connection, discriminated against? Why don't we refer to cooked chicken as something like poulet?

(On the other hand, both cattle and poultry stem from French chatel and pouletrie respectively. Also, I'm guessing that technically, poulet would translate to fowl. But, it appears to be the word of choice for chicken in France.)

Best Answer

According to this paper (PDF) from Phillip Slavin, chicken was one meat that even the peasantry could afford to eat.

Although poultry occupied the smallest part of demesne livestock, constituting about two per cent of it (Table 1), its social importance and omnipresence cannot be understated, despite scholarly marginalization. Chicken meat constituted an important part of everyday diet, and it was afforded by virtually every social stratum both in England and the Continent

Since eating it wasn't reserved to rich French-speaking folk, it makes sense that the word for it as food wasn't either.

As another answer also pointed out, the word poultry came into the language from Old Norman (presumably with the Conquest).

So, given a social situation where everyone was eating chicken but only Old English speakers were raising them, it makes sense that we ended up with two words for it as food, and one (Old English-derived) word for it as an animal.