last chicken in the shop
- idiom
- Informal
:
último pollo en la tienda
- Sometimes she feels like the last chicken in the shop, both wanted and a bit out of place.
Examples
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He strutted into the room acting like the last chicken in the shop, expecting everyone’s admiration.
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Don’t act like you’re the last chicken in the shop; we’re all important here.
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Don't treat her like the last chicken in the shop!
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He feels like the last chicken in the shop sometimes.
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Don’t act like you’re the last chicken in the shop; we’re all important here.
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He strutted into the room acting like the last chicken in the shop, expecting everyone’s admiration.
-
Sometimes she feels like the last chicken in the shop, both wanted and a bit out of place.
Surface Forms
Morphology
last + chicken + in + the + shop
The phrase yields a clear literal image from its parts — 'last' (remaining/at the end) + 'chicken' (a commodity/animal) + 'shop' (place of sale) — so learners can plausibly infer 'the remaining/unsold one' or 'unique/leftover', which suggests partial transparency. However, the target senses given (someone who feels highly valued or alternatively unwanted) are contradictory and not predictably derived from the constituents, and this is not a conventional English idiom with consistent cross‑linguistic parallels, so full meaning would likely be unclear to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The idiom last chicken in the shop may come from a simple market scene: when only one bird is left, that last chicken stands out in the shop, seen by some as very wanted and by others as odd. So calling someone the last chicken in the shop means they act like they are 'special' or must be noticed, and they can also feel a little 'left out'.
