Word.ws English Dictionary

chicken-and-egg

chicken-and-egg is the alternative spelling of chicken and egg.

Meaning of chicken and egg

Noun

chicken and egg pl (plural only)

  1. (attributive, plural, plural-only, usually) A situation or case in which it is difficult to distinguish cause and effect, having a circular character.
    • From present observation, A and B are needed to make C, and C is needed to make A and B. This chemical cycle has, again, a “chicken and egg” character.2012, Charles H. Langmuir, Wally Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 419
    Synonyms:
    hen and egg

Phrases with chicken-and-egg

Questions about chicken-and-egg

What is chicken-and-egg the alternative spelling of?
Chicken-and-egg is the alternative spelling of chicken and egg.

Words near chicken-and-egg in the dictionary

  1. chicken wire
  2. chicken wires
  3. chicken à la king
  4. chicken's-meat
  5. chicken-65
  6. chicken-and-egg
  7. chicken-and-egg problem
  8. chicken-and-egg problems
  9. chicken-and-egg question
  10. chicken-and-egg questions
  11. chicken-and-egg situation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chicken-and-egg (page history and authors); chicken and egg (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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