chicken feed
1
6.8
- noun
- Informal
:
miseria
- After reviewing the budget, she realized that the proposed expenses were just chicken feed in the grand scheme of things.
Examples
-
Well, I might be able to figure Where I could cut you in on, say, 5% of... still chicken feed.
-
Five hundred bucks is not chicken feed.
-
Well, it's hardly chicken feed.
-
It is mere ill luck to work for such chicken feed of a salary.
Fiction book (1991) -
That was chicken feed.
Blog text (2) -
- That's chicken feed.
-
To many investors, a $1,000 profit is just chicken feed compared to what they usually earn.
Synonyms
8
8.2
A very small amount of money that hardly matters next to bigger costs
2
9.9
Something of little or no worth
A very small amount of money that is not worth much
A very small amount of money that is not worth much
A very small amount of money or something of little value
A very small amount of money that has little value
Antonyms
How Much
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal meaning 'food for chickens' evokes something small/cheap, so the link to a trivial amount of money is motivated and partly inferable from the constituents. However, mapping that cheapness onto monetary value and using it as an evaluative idiom requires cultural/pragmatic knowledge and is not fully compositional for a learner encountering it for the first time.
Etymology
Chicken feed became a joke for money because real chicken food is cheap and seems not worth much. That's why people use it to mean 'a very small amount of money'.