My wife and I were having a conversation that somehow ended up discussion why our children always referred to any type of meat as chicken.  Strange huh?  But during the course of this strange conversation my wife questioned why we call chicken, chicken?  We don’t call beef, cow.  We don’t call pork, pig.  So why do we call chicken, chicken?

In postulating the answer we came up with a theory (not based on any scientific evidence).  Chicken along with turkey are both considered poultry; the greater classification.  The theory goes that the meat of the subset of animals belonging to a larger group is given the name of the animal itself.  For example, bovines encompass only cows.  Because there is no subset in the larger group that is fundamentally different from the larger group itself, we come up with a different name for the meat; that is, beef.  Whereas poultry encompasses not only chicken but turkey as well.  Therefore, we cannot request poultry per se without identifying which kind of poultry we want.  The same goes for fowl.  Do you want duck or quail?  Pheasant perhaps?

Some examples of groups with no fundamentally different subset (to my knowledge) are:

• Deer - venison
• Cow - beef (there is of course veal, but that is just a young cow :D)
• Pig - pork

Some examples of subsets of groups are:

• Chicken and turkey - poultry
• Duck, quail, pheasant - fowl

There are probably some that I missed, and I may actually be wrong.  The point, however, is that it was a great mental exercise to analyze something as simple (and mundane) as why chicken meat is called chicken and cow meat is called beef.  There are many things in everyday life that can cause one to ponder.  Think about these things once and a while.  You will be honing in your analytical skills.  Moreover, your family may even get involved in the conversation.  My teenagers are very fond of proving me wrong (or trying to), and they are not always that excited about discussing the rationals surrounding the freedom (or lack thereof) of speech.  Try it, you just might learn something.  God Bless and have a great day.