Word.ws English Dictionary

Mother Carey's chicken

Mother Carey's chicken noun: the storm petrel.

Noun

Mother Carey's chicken (plural Mother Carey's chickens)

  1. The storm petrel.
    • A few blue petrels, black sheer-waters and Mather Caries chickens are all the birds we see.1773, James Cook, The Journals, Second Voyage, 27 December
    • Ten or fifteen dark little birds […] these are "Mother Carey's chickens," the "water-witches," Stormy Petrels, which are so familiar to the eye of the sailor, and the sight of which he dreads so much; […]1874, Alfred Edmund Brehm, Bird-life, tr. by H.M. Labouchere and W. Jesse, page 866

Forms of Mother Carey's chicken

pluralMother Carey's chickens

Questions about Mother Carey's chicken

What does Mother Carey's chicken mean?
Mother Carey's chicken means the storm petrel.
What part of speech is Mother Carey's chicken?
Mother Carey's chicken is a noun.
What is the plural of Mother Carey's chicken?
The plural of Mother Carey's chicken is Mother Carey's chickens.

Words near Mother Carey's chicken in the dictionary

  1. mother and baby unit
  2. mother and baby units
  3. mother bomb
  4. mother bombs
  5. Mother Carey
  6. Mother Carey's chicken
  7. Mother Carey's chickens
  8. Mother Carey's geese
  9. Mother Carey's goose
  10. mother cell
  11. Mother Christmas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mother Carey's 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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