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Glite Dictionary
🪨 Historic landmark 🐔 A chicken
Plymouth Rock

Plymouth Rock

7.2
An American chicken breed with black and white stripes that lays eggs well
  • noun
  • /ˈplɪməθ rɑk/
translation icon : pollo Plymouth Rock
  • Farmers choose the Plymouth Rock breed for its ability to lay a large number of eggs.
  • barred Plymouth Rock
  • white Plymouth Rock
  • Plymouth Rock chicken

Examples

  • The Plymouth Rock chicken is known for its distinctive barred plumage and hardiness.

  • And three Saanen goats, some Plymouth Rock chickens, two sows, and a boar.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Many backyard chicken enthusiasts prefer the Plymouth Rock because of its friendly demeanor and reliability.

Surface Forms

Plymouth Rock singular
Plymouth Rocks plural

Morphology

Plymouth + rock

Although a learner may know 'Plymouth' as a place name and 'rock' as a stone, those constituents give no clue that the phrase names a breed of chicken. This is a toponymic/nominalized name (breed named after a place), so the meaning is not compositionally predictable and would be opaque to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Plymouth Rock (the chicken) was named after the same place: breeders in New England used the town name Plymouth and the famous Rock there to show where the bird came from, so the name tells the breed's origin.