Word.ws English Dictionary

gunpowder chicken

gunpowder chicken noun: a spicy Asian-style dish of chicken cooked with dried chili peppers, spring onion, peanuts, etc.

Noun

gunpowder chicken (uncountable)

  1. A spicy Asian-style dish of chicken cooked with dried chili peppers, spring onion, peanuts, etc.
    • Near-synonym: kung pao chicken
    Synonyms:
    kung pao chicken

Synonyms of gunpowder chicken

  • kung pao chicken

Origin of gunpowder chicken

Dishes called by this name are usually similar to those (in numerous variants) called Kung Pao chicken, which suggests that perhaps this name was coined in English-speaking countries as a fancifully anglicised (similar-sounding but generic) replacement of that name. This would compare with the choice of using the vaguer name General's chicken instead of General Tso's chicken. Such choices usually have more to do with a mere desire for familiarized names rather than the motivation behind names such as liberty cabbage or freedom fries, which involves a desire to break with the heritage of a dish's original name.

Questions about gunpowder chicken

What does gunpowder chicken mean?
Gunpowder chicken means a spicy Asian-style dish of chicken cooked with dried chili peppers, spring onion, peanuts, etc.
What part of speech is gunpowder chicken?
Gunpowder chicken is a noun.

Words near gunpowder chicken in the dictionary

  1. gunport
  2. gunports
  3. gunpost
  4. gunposts
  5. gunpowder
  6. gunpowder chicken
  7. gunpowder empire
  8. gunpowder empires
  9. Gunpowder Plot
  10. gunpowder tea
  11. gunpowder teas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gunpowder chicken (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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