Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • A familiar name for a hen.
  • noun An Irish female domestic; a servant-girl.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun colloq. An Irish serving woman or girl.
  • noun A name used in calling a hen or chicken.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun pejorative a woman, especially an old woman; especially one regarded as fussy or mean or a gossipy busybody.
  • noun an attractive little girl
  • noun archaic (colloquial) - An Irish maidservant.
  • noun by extension (derogatory) Any Irishwoman
  • noun A name used in calling a hen or chicken, often as "biddybiddybiddy".

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun young bird especially of domestic fowl
  • noun adult female chicken

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Of course I've heard the word biddy before, but when I hear it I think of old ladies who are a little bit cranky.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Ange 2009

  • After learning from Going like Sixty that a biddy is a chicken, I invite you to write your first 50 words on the topic “biddy” in a comment.

    Biddy « First 50 Words – Writing Prompts 2007

  • Before your heart is stricken and you become severly sickened check with your local wiccan to know a biddy is a chicken. on May 29, 2007 at 12:49 pm | Reply first 50

    Giddy « First 50 Words – Writing Prompts 2007

  • -- Do you use Google's 411 service and love the 'biddy' sound it makes?

    Coffee Break: November 12 2007

  • Many should also find some amusement in the British houseguest who breastfeeds her 25-year-old son and likes to offer up her "biddy" to anyone who might require it.

    The Trades 2009

  • When I first read it, I saw all the way to my grave in the character of Madame de Farge, the old biddy who silently weaves the code of revolution into the blankets she crochets.

    Roseanne Archy Roseanne Barr 2011

  • Some of the comic interludes had more pep—in "Being Small," a boy slave jauntily describes how he hides under his master's house and listens as the master reads the newspaper out loud—but others, like "I Listen," in which a self-described "old biddy" pie maker spies on her Union soldier customers, just fell flat.

    An Artifact of Indulgence From Bernard Herrmann Heidi Waleson 2011

  • And Mary Catherine is what that old biddy, Clara of the Bowed Legs and Beehive her hair, who lives in the cottage across the path, calls a navel gazer.

    Amaryllis in Blueberry Christina Meldrum 2011

  • And Mary Catherine is what that old biddy, Clara of the Bowed Legs and Beehive her hair, who lives in the cottage across the path, calls a navel gazer.

    Amaryllis in Blueberry Christina Meldrum 2011

  • When I first read it, I saw all the way to my grave in the character of Madame de Farge, the old biddy who silently weaves the code of revolution into the blankets she crochets.

    Roseanne Archy Roseanne Barr 2011

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