hen
3
6.5
- noun
- /hɛn/
- Specialized
:
hembra
- Tall reeds circle the pool, a higher clump of green cattails near the center where a pair of mud hens glide silently, hardly creating a ripple.
- mud hen
- hen harrier
- wood duck hen
Examples
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The marine biologist observed a female hen lobster during the research expedition.
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Long-legged water birds: jacanas, swamp hens, coots, and little and purple herons foraged among the plants.
Academic text (2006) -
This one's got old Chinese hen tracks on her.
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Where you been, marsh hen?
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I took one of the boats out onto the lake at sunset to watch the water hens feeding.
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I knew I'd made the right decision when Vickie entered our cottage late one night in the form of a gigantic mutant hen.
Fiction book (2001) -
Ben Gurion was reading a thick volume in a cone of light, and Barak was rapidly scrawling Hebrew hen tracks on a pad.
Fiction book (1993) -
And that great hen salmon, weighed quickly before a tangle of arms gentled it back into the river under its captor's careful eye, spun the scale to just over 90 pounds.
Fiction book (1999) -
In the aquarium, we learned about the life cycle of the hen octopus, which lays thousands of eggs.
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While studying crustaceans, the scientist noted the behavior of a hen crab in its habitat.
Synonyms
278
1.0
An animal that can have babies or lay eggs
Idioms
Compounds
- Australian
A large female ground bird from Australia that builds big nesting mounds and looks after eggs
- New Zealand
A large flightless bird from New Zealand with short wings and a small sharp spur that often steals shiny things
A garden plant with hanging bell-shaped flowers that are purple and white in a checkered pattern
- US
A large wild bird like a prairie chicken that lived in eastern North America and is now extinct
- UK
A medium bird of prey with long wings and tail that flies low to hunt over marshes and open land
A large mushroom you can eat that has many overlapping caps and grows at the base of trees
A large edible mushroom with many overlapping caps that looks like a hen and grows at the base of trees
- New Zealand
A flightless bird from New Zealand with small spikes on its wings that is bold and curious
Surface Forms
Etymology
The word hen was later used by fishermen and markets to mean a 'female' of some other animals, like crabs or lobsters, because people used the same simple word for a female animal. That's why, in some places, a hen can mean a female sea animal as well as a chicken.