parson’s nose
noun; informal, chiefly British

- the fatty rear end or tail stub of a cooked fowl 

- the pygostyle of a bird, especially when roasted

- the fleshy, upturned tail of a cooked chicken or turkey

Cambridge Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The expression emerged in Britain as a satirical jab at the clergy. While early anti-clerical jokes compared pompous preachers to strutting birds, the exact phrase began appearing securely in print in the early nineteenth century. Francis Grose recorded the synonymous clerical slur in late eighteenth-century slang collections, contrasting English anticlericalism with Catholic targets.

The anatomical comparison seized upon the upturned, bulbous stump of a roasted fowl's tail, imagining it as the prominent nose of a self-satisfied Anglican rector tilted high in the air.

A religious tug-of-war soon shaped regional variants. While English diners mocked their tithe-collecting local vicar with "parson's nose", Roman Catholic communities in Ireland, and later many American households, preferred "the Pope's nose". 

In both traditions, ordinary people used the kitchen table to register quiet, irreverent dissent against ecclesiastical authority.

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A DINOSAUR HIDING IN DINNER

Turn a roast chicken over and examine its comic little tailpiece, ...a remarkable piece of evolutionary engineering.

Beneath the flesh lies the pygostyle, formed from fused vertebrae at the end of a bird’s spine. It anchors muscles and supports the tail feathers used for steering, braking and display. The surrounding area also contains the preen gland, which produces an oily secretion that birds spread through their feathers.

Early feathered dinosaurs had much longer, bony tails. Archaeopteryx, which lived about 150 million years ago, carried feathers along a reptile-like chain of tail vertebrae. Modern birds replaced that heavy arrangement with a shortened tail.

The modest lump beside the roasting tin therefore preserves evidence of one of flight’s great redesigns: a dinosaur’s long balancing tail compressed into a compact support for a feathered fan.

The parson’s nose is a dinosaur tail in miniature.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

chicken tail, PARSON’S NOSE, pope’s nose, pygostyle, tailpiece

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today. Say something like:

“How strange that the chicken’s PARSON’S NOSE harks back to their dinosaur origins.”

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