mother hen
- noun
- /ˈmʌðər hɛn/
:
gallina madre
- Later in the day, I saw that the mother hen had emerged and observed her behavior.
Examples
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The mother hen clucked softly as her chicks followed her around the yard.
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The proud mother hen with her chicks.
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Probably misled by the comfortable warmth up there, the mother hen had nested much too early.
Fiction book (1994) -
I tell my son that the bulbs generate heat to help the eggs develop, and that the lights keep the unborn chicks in the eggs warm the way the mother hen keeps her eggs warm in a nest.
Fiction book (1994) -
During the spring, the mother hen teaches her chicks to scratch for food in the dirt.
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Each evening, the mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings to keep them warm.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an overprotective, fussing person' is a metaphorical extension of the literal parts: a 'mother' is protective and a 'hen' is stereotypically broody and caring for chicks, so the combined image points to someone who fusses over others. Because this relies on cultural/animal-behaviour knowledge and a figurative mapping rather than a purely compositional pattern, a B1 learner who knows the words may often guess the sense but it is not fully predictable for all learners.
Etymology
The term mother hen comes from the farm bird: a hen that acts like a mother, gathering and protecting her chicks under her wings. So it simply means 'a hen that looks after her young'.
