chicken and egg
chicken and egg noun: a situation or case in which it is difficult to distinguish cause and effect, having a circular character.
Noun
chicken and egg pl (plural only)
- 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
- Every other show on TV has a guest panel of comics, so why can’t a drag queen tell the latest Apprentice contestant: “You’re fired”? Or a mime taste the cakes on the Bake Off’s An Extra Slice? The answer is usually that we aren’t in the same network because of cabaret’s lack of presence outside of...2014 October 27, Michael Twaits, “How can we make cabaret a sustainable career in the performing arts?”, in The Guardian
- Synonyms:
- hen and egg
Synonyms of chicken and egg
- hen and egg
Forms of chicken and egg
| alternative form | chicken-and-egg |
|---|---|
| alternative form | chicken or egg |
Origin of chicken and egg
From the proverbial question of whether the chicken or the egg came first, attested as early as Aristotle (4th century BCE).
Words formed from chicken and egg
Questions about chicken and egg
- What does chicken and egg mean?
- Chicken and egg means a situation or case in which it is difficult to distinguish cause and effect, having a circular character.
- What part of speech is chicken and egg?
- Chicken and egg is a noun.
Words near chicken and egg in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “chicken and egg.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chicken_and_egg. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.