Word.ws English Dictionary

like a chicken with its head off

like a chicken with its head off is the alternative form of like a chicken with its head cut off.

Meaning of like a chicken with its head cut off

Prepositional phrase

  1. (informal) In a frantic, disorganized manner.
    • His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off—such was the simile that occurred to him.c. 1900, Jack London, To Build a Fire

Questions about like a chicken with its head off

What is like a chicken with its head off the alternative form of?
Like a chicken with its head off is the alternative form of like a chicken with its head cut off.

Words near like a chicken with its head off in the dictionary

  1. like a cat on a hot tin roof
  2. like a champ
  3. like a charm
  4. like a chicken on a June bug
  5. like a chicken with its head cut off
  6. like a chicken with its head off
  7. like a chicken with no head
  8. like a chicken with the pip
  9. like a cow on a flat rock
  10. like a cow pissing on a flat rock
  11. like a demon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: like a chicken with its head off (page history and authors); like a chicken with its head cut off (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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Cite this entry: “like a chicken with its head off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/like_a_chicken_with_its_head_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.