Definitions

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

  • noun A young domestic hen, usually one that is less than one year old.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A young hen.
  • noun A bivalve, Tapes pullastra, of the family Veneridæ, abundant in European seas, chiefly in muddy sand or sandy bottoms near tide-mark.

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

  • noun A young hen, or female of the domestic fowl.
  • noun [Obs.] the treadle of an egg.

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

  • noun A young hen, especially one less than a year old.
  • noun slang A spineless person; a coward.

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

  • noun flesh of a medium-sized young chicken suitable for frying
  • noun young hen usually less than a year old

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pulet, from Old French polet, diminutive of poul, cock, and poule, hen, both from Latin pullus, young fowl, young animal, chicken; see pau- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman pullet, poulet ("young chicken"); polette ("young hen"), from poule ("hen").

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Examples

  • Why Clay, I thought you knew a pullet is a bullet that has been pulled and can be reused.

    Stupid Moves 2009

  • Why Clay, I thought you knew a pullet is a bullet that has been pulled and can be reused.

    Stupid Moves 2009

  • For those of you who don't know, a pullet is a young hen, not even a year old.

    Archive 2007-08-01 Gumbo Lily 2007

  • For those of you who don't know, a pullet is a young hen, not even a year old.

    Pullet Eggs Gumbo Lily 2007

  • Some translations are trickier, like describing pullet, which is a hen less than a year old but appears on some menus as Sexually Inexperienced Chicken.

    Archive 2007-04-01 Ann Althouse 2007

  • There was one unofficial poll taken by the Staley Milling Company in -- in Kansas, which had these things called pullet adams, which were a feed for -- for livestock.

    The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election 2000

  • It does not mean by this that a scrawny pullet is of more importance than family honor; it simply means that the man who steals a pullet is a cowardly thief, while the one who ignores the advances of a pretty woman is an incorrigible idiot.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 1. 1898

  • Next up for fans of beautiful creatures today, we have Dorcas the Silver Dorking pullet (a pullet is the term used for a young hen not yet in lay).

    British Blogs 2009

  • Next up for fans of beautiful creatures today, we have Dorcas the Silver Dorking pullet (a pullet is the term used for a young hen not yet in lay).

    British Blogs 2009

  • At first, they lay what are called pullet eggs, which are very small.

    Signs of the Times 2009

Comments

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  • From "Haile Selassie Funeral Train" by Guy Davenport.

    January 19, 2010