DCHP-1 Online

prairie chicken † 

• 1 a grouse, Tympanuchus cupido americanus, common on the southern prairies.

  See also: chicken  heath cock  pinnated grouse  prairie fowl  prairie grouse  prairie hen  squaretail (def. 2)  

  • 1854  Among the edible furnished under their supervision, were 75 hams, 150 Turkeys, 400 Chickens, 250 Prairie Chickens . . . and 100 Smoked Tongues.
  • 1958  . . . there's a colony of true prairie chicken living here. . . .
  • 1966  At one time the prairie chicken lived in the southern counties of Essex and Kent [Ont.].

• 2 a species of grouse, Pedicetes phasianellus, found in the West and North.

  See also: sharp-tailed grouse  

  • 1874  (1961)  The country about us teemed with ducks, prairie chickens, and prairie plovers. . . .
  • 1908  . . . we found it to be a wide and beautiful table-like prairie, begirt with aspens, on which we flushed a pack of prairie chickens.
  • 1963  . . . Saskatchewan is the only province to adopt an official emblem in addition to a flower: in 1945 the prairie chicken, or sharp-tailed grouse, by enactment was made an emblem of Saskatchewan.

• 3 Esp. B.C., Slang a newcomer, especially a farmer from the prairies.

  • 1919  They would be good camps to send these prairie chickens to, and any other man who does not believe in union principles.
  • 1953  So a brand-new deck was toted in,/ And eight of us sat in;/ Four of them were fallers,/ And the foreman Joe McGlinn./ The other a prairie chicken/ Who had come to the woods to toil. . . .
  • 1961  Clod-hopper, we call him, and stubble jumper. And when he drives his fat new Buick to the Coast to winter among us we brand him "prairie chicken". . . .