Chicken, or chickenshit, when used as an insult, is generally used to suggest a lack, or absence of courage. Its use as a motivator, or manipulator, is similar, but hopes to appeal to the wish of the target to prove that they in fact do have courage, i.e. "Do the right thing, don't be a chickenshit."

Calling someone yellow, or yellow bellied, usually has a similar purpose.


Also a petty retaliation, self-serving retribution, or underhanded political maneuver.

Supervisor: "Your proposal was chosen over mine by the directors, so I'm not giving you a pay raise this year."<BR>
Employee: "That's really chickenshit."

In the Back to the Future series, Marty McFly had a notoriously low tolerance to being called "chicken".

Quotes

:I'm brave but I'm chickenshit - "Hand In My Pocket", Alanis Morissette

See also:

Game of Chicken

"Paul Fussell, in his book Wartime, has the best definition: 'Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called--instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit--because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.'"- "Band of Brothers" Steven E. Ambrose--2001