Word.ws English Dictionary

chicken out

chicken out verb: to shy away from a daring task; to decline, refuse, or avoid something due to fear or uncertainty.

Verb

chicken out (third-person singular simple present chickens out, present participle chickening out, simple past and past participle chickened out)

  1. (idiomatic) To shy away from a daring task; to decline, refuse, or avoid something due to fear or uncertainty.
    • We almost convinced his dad to ride the roller coaster, but he chickened out when he saw how high it went.
    • I dismiss Reporters Without Borders. Completely nonsensical. We invited them in for a select committee hearing, and in the true heritage of free speech, they chickened out.2022 June 29, K Shanmugam, “Hard Talk: K. Shanmugam: Will Singapore have to choose between the US and China?”, in BBC

chicken out meaning in Urdu, Persian and Thai

chicken out in Urdu

پسپا ہونا, پیچھے ہٹنا

chicken out in Persian

shy away from a daring task
جا زدن jâ zadan

chicken out in Thai

shy away from a daring task
ป๊อด bpɔ́ɔt

Synonyms of chicken out

Forms of chicken out

third-person singular presentchickens out
present participlechickening out
past participlechickened out
pastchickened out

Words formed from chicken out

Questions about chicken out

What does chicken out mean?
Chicken out means to shy away from a daring task; to decline, refuse, or avoid something due to fear or uncertainty.
What is chicken out in Urdu?
Chicken out in Urdu is پسپا ہونا, پیچھے ہٹنا. See Chicken out meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is chicken out?
Chicken out is a verb.
What is the past tense of chicken out?
The past tense of chicken out is chickened out.

Words near chicken out in the dictionary

  1. chicken on a throne
  2. chicken or egg
  3. chicken or egg question
  4. chicken or egg questions
  5. chicken oriental
  6. chicken out
  7. chicken paw
  8. chicken paws
  9. chicken pest
  10. chicken pill
  11. chicken pills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chicken out (page history and authors); chicken out (Urdu Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-chicken out.ogg.

Cite this entry: “chicken out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chicken_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.