hen
Americannoun
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hens
plural
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a female chicken.
Our hens only recently started laying, but these fresh eggs were worth the wait!
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the female of any bird, especially a gallinaceous bird.
The mallard drakes are splendidly colorful while the hens are camouflaged in drab plumage.
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the female of certain marine creatures, including lobsters and salmon.
I prefer a hen when making lobster bisque, as the dark red roe enhances both flavor and color.
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Informal: Sometimes Offensive. a usually middle-aged or older woman, especially one who is considered to be petty or gossipy.
Let’s get out of here and leave the hens to their blather.
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Informal. a female in attendance at a hen party.
The incident at the restaurant occurred hours after our party was over and we’d all gone home, but all of us hens were brought in for questioning the next morning.
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British and Australian Informal. the bride-to-be at a bachelorette party.
A toast to Vera, the beautiful hen, who’s flying our coop in less than a fortnight!
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Scots Informal. an affectionate or familiar term of address to a girl or woman.
That’s lovely, hen, thank you.
noun
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the female of any bird, esp the adult female of the domestic fowl
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the female of certain other animals, such as the lobster
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informal a woman regarded as gossipy or foolish
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dialect a term of address (often affectionate), used to women and girls
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extremely rare
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of hen
First recorded before 1000; Middle English; Old English hen(n) (compare Old English hana “cock”); cognate with German Henne; akin to Latin canere “to sing”; see also chant ( def. ), charm 1 ( def. )
Explanation
A hen is a female chicken. It's important to make sure your new backyard chickens are hens and not roosters — otherwise, those eggs you're looking forward to just aren't going to happen. You can use the word hen for the female of many birds, including turkeys, pheasants, and quail, as well as for a female lobster. In parts of Britain, a hen can also be a (slightly offensive) slang term for a woman, and if something's described as being "rare as hen's teeth," it's extremely precious or scarce.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The third case involved covert surveillance at a hen harrier roost in the Yorkshire Dales where investigators captured evidence of a planned attempt to kill one of the UK's rarest birds of prey.
From BBC ● May 25, 2026
"There's a jay ... That's a bluethroat ... Do you see the hen harrier? We're lucky," the 37-year-old photographer told AFP.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
The disease largely spared large egg-laying hen farms that can house millions of birds in single locations this past year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
Boon had been on a long weekend hen do in Milan with five others before her airport ordeal.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 2026
I didn’t even want to think about the hen.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
The bird flu outbreak has resulted in the deaths of roughly 200 million U.S. chickens, turkeys and egg-laying hens since it began in 2022, according to the Agriculture Department.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Depre raises around 17,500 free-range hens and 70,000 quails in sheds with outdoor runs.
From Barron's ● Jun. 23, 2026
Oversized animals, including dinosaurs, bulls, roosters, hens and seals, also multiplied.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
During the avian flu outbreak, millions of hens were destroyed across the country.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 23, 2025
No, he spread the wheat so far and so carefully that the hens couldn’t find some of it at all.
From "The Red Pony" by John Steinbeck
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
