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chicken feed

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noun Slang.
  1. an insignificant sum of money: He's so rich that $1000 is chicken feed to him.
  2. small change, as pennies and nickels.
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Origin of chicken feed

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words

pittance

Examples from the Web for chicken feed

Historical Examples

  • There was corn in the barn, and chicken-feed in the yard, and fruit in the garden.

    Bannertail

    Ernest Thompson Seton

  • Hugh was obviously small money, and Allen had no time to waste on chicken-feed, but Winsor was a different matter.

    The Plastic Age

    Percy Marks

  • Well, Dr. Filhiol, there, fed his nag enough of our chicken-feed to last us a week.

    Cursed

    George Allan England

  • I thought that, when compared with the clamorous west, we were raising only chicken-feed, and hardly enough of that.

    In Pastures Green

    Peter McArthur

  • Rats and mice and such small deer, as Shakespeare has it, chicken-feed of the larder they might be called.

    Dracula

    Bram Stoker

British Dictionary definitions for chicken feed

chicken feed

noun
  1. slang a trifling amount of money
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Idioms and Phrases with chicken feed

chicken feed

Trifling amount of money, as in I'm not going to mow lawns for $5 an hour—that's chicken feed. This expression alludes to the fact that chickens can be fed corn and wheat grains too small for other uses. [Slang; early 1800s]

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The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.