to be chicken
noun (informal)

- a person who is too frightened to do something involving a risk

Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The word "chicken" has its origins in Old English. It can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic word kiukinam. This word later evolved into cycen in Old English. Over time, the pronunciation and spelling of the word changed, eventually settling on "chicken" in Modern English.

The meaning "one who is cowardly or timorous" is from the 1610s; and the adjectival sense of "cowardly" is at least as old as the 14th century.

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HOW TO HYPNOTISE A CHICKEN

Don’t try this at home! but did you know that a chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance, with its head down near the ground, by drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at the beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken.

If the chicken is hypnotized in this manner, it will continue to stare at the line, remaining immobile for as long as 30-minutes. Ethologists refer to this state as 'tonic immobility' i.e. a natural state of semi-paralysis that some animals enter when presented with a threat, which is probably a defensive mechanism intended to simulate death, albeit rather poorly.

An early reference of this phenomenon was described as early as 1646 in 'Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae' by Athanasius Kircher.

In modern times, the United States military when trying to avoid divulging information, gives reporters briefings with 25 minutes of intentionally dull PowerPoint presentations and just 5-minutes left at the end for questions from anyone who is still awake. The presentations are called “hypnotizing chickens”.

adapted from Wikipedia

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SYNONYMS

- to feel afraid

apprehensive, CHICKEN, chicken-hearted, cowering, cowardly, craven, daunted, edgy, faint-hearted, fearful, fidgety, frightened, gutless, in a sweat, jittery, jumpy, lily-livered, nervous, on edge, panicky, petrified, phobic, quaking, quivering, rabbity, scared stiff (to death, witless), scared, shaky, shivering, shrinking, terror-stricken, timorous, trembling, twitchy, uneasy, unnerved, uptight, worried, yellow-bellied, weak-kneed, wigged out, worried sick

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

"The antithesis of being CHICKEN is the proverb 'Better Safe than Sorry'!”

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