Where did the word Chick come from?
Having a man hold the door open for you could be seen as either polite, or chauvinist, depending on your views. Similarly, being called 'pet' or 'chick' can either rankle or please. Susie Dent is a resident of CountDown’s Dictionary Corner, and she also studies the origins of words at Oxford University Press. In the next in our series on words, Susie Dent took Lizz Pearson to the headquarters of OUP to look into the changing meanings of the word ‘chick’ – and asked her what its usage tells us about how our language has developed.
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