Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A young fowl, especially a young turkey.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The young or chick of the domestic fowl, turkey, pheasant, guinea-fowl, and similar birds.
  • To kill poultry.

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

  • noun A young chicken, partridge, grouse, or the like.

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

  • noun A young table-bird: turkey, partridge, grouse etc.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pult, young fowl, young chicken, short for polet, from Old French poulet, diminutive of poule, polle, hen; see poulard.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English pulte, from Old French poulet ("young fowl"), diminutive of poule ("hen"), from Latin pulla.

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Examples

  • Joe made a chirping, clucky noise, the poult looked him square in the eye, "and something very unambiguous happened in that moment".

    TV review: My Life as a Turkey 2011

  • That's a turkey poult, Pa explains to his appalled wife.

    Pipers Piping, Drummers Drumming Meghan Cox Gurdon 2011

  • So Joe put his face down to the level of the opening eggs and the first poult emerged, wet and confused.

    TV review: My Life as a Turkey 2011

  • The kee kee is the sound a poult makes because it's too young to “break” a yelp.

    Autumn Gobblers: How To Hunt Turkeys in the Fall 2008

  • Shooting a hen is no more wrong than shooting an antlerless deer, and after you've had a 10-pound hen or even a 6-pound poult roasted whole for Thanksgiving, a Butterball will never satisfy you again.

    Autumn Gobblers: How To Hunt Turkeys in the Fall 2008

  • So Sayyar sprang up and going out to the desert caught an ostrich-poult and brought it to his lord.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Also the general idea is that no blood will impose upon the exerts, or jury of matrons, except that of a pigeon-poult which exactly resembles hymeneal blood — when not subjected to the microscope.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • He persisted in dressing, as in his youth, in black silk stockings, shoes with gold buckles, breeches of black poult-de-soie, and a black coat, adorned with the red rosette.

    Ursula 2006

  • Countrey under a hedge; and beside all these excellent parts, shee was crooke backt, poult footed, and went like a lame Mare in

    The Decameron 2004

  • She declared that for the last three years every turkey poult had gone, and that at last she was beginning to feel it.

    The American Senator 2004

Comments

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  • (noun) - A young turkey, fit for the table but not fully grown--a turkey-poult. In Scottish, pout is a young partridge or moor-fowl. From French poulet, a pullet. --Edward Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, 1823

    February 11, 2018