## Poultry
**poultry** (n.) — domesticated birds kept for eggs or meat; the category name itself.
### The Root: PIE *pau-
At the base of *poultry* stands a Proto-Indo-European root, *\*pau-*, carrying the sense of *few, small, young*. This single root about smallness and youth radiated outward through daughter languages to produce a wide family of words — words about children, animals in their first season of life, and the arithmetic of scarcity.
In Latin, *\*pau-* generated at least three distinct descendants:
- **pullus** — a young animal, especially a chick or foal - **paucus** — few, scarce (giving English *paucity*) - **puer** — boy, child (giving English *puerile*) - **parvus** — small (giving *parvo-, parvovirus*)
In Greek, the same root produced **pais** (genitive *paidos*), meaning child. From this stem Greek built *paideia* (education, the rearing of a child), which entered English through Latin as the second element of *encyclopedia* — literally the *enkyklios paideia*, the "circular" or complete instruction of a child. *Pediatrics*, *pedagogy* (leading a child, from *pais* + *agein*), and *pedant* all trace back to this same PIE notion of youth and smallness.
### From Pullus to Poultry
Latin *pullus* meant any young animal — a chick, a foal, a puppy — but in Vulgar Latin it narrowed toward domestic fowl. By Old French, *pullus* had become **poule** (hen), with a diminutive **poulet** (young chicken). The trade term for the dealer or seller of such birds was **pouletier**, and the goods he sold collectively were **pouletrie**.
This word crossed the Channel with the Normans and settled into Middle English as *pultrie*, later *poultry*. The *-ry* suffix follows the standard pattern of Norman trade categories: *pantry* (from *paneterie*, bread store), *buttery*, *spicery*. Poultry named not the bird but the category — the merchant's domain.
### A Pair of Doublets: Poultry and Pullet
*Poultry* and **pullet** descend from the same Latin word, *pullus*, but they arrived in English by different routes and at different times — a classic doublet pair.
*Pullet* came through Old French *poulet* directly, borrowed in the 14th century as a single bird, specifically a young hen in her first year. *Poultry* came through the collective trade noun *pouletrie*, denoting the category. Same Latin ancestor; one word names the individual creature, the other names the entire farmyard class.
The English *foal* extends the doublet family further. Old English *fola* (young horse) derives from Proto-Germanic *\*fulaz*, itself from *\*pau-* via a Germanic branch parallel to Latin *pullus*. The Latin and Germanic lines separated millennia before either reached English, yet both words — *pullet* and *foal* — describe a young animal in its first season, both from the same PIE root.
### The Norman Vocabulary Divide
The Conquest of 1066 produced a well-known split in English food vocabulary: the live animal kept its Anglo-Saxon name, while the prepared meat took its French name. *Cow* at pasture, *beef* at table. *Pig* in the sty, *pork* on the plate.
Poultry breaks this pattern. The French word won even for the living category, not just the cooked dish. English never fully replaced *hen* and *cock* for individual birds, but for the class — the species kept on a farm — *poultry* (French) displaced any native English collective term. The Norman influence here ran deeper: the entire commercial vocabulary of fowl-keeping came packaged with the French words of manorial estate managers.
### The Betting Pool
One of the stranger branches from this root involves not a farmyard but a gambling table. English **pool** — as in *betting pool*, *car pool*, *pool of resources* — derives from French **poule**, the very same word as *hen*. The connection is the pot of stakes in a card game.
In 17th-century French gambling terminology, the collected wagers were placed *dans la poule* — into the hen — a folk metaphor, perhaps from the image of coins gathered like eggs in a nest, or from the practice of playing for a live bird as a prize. A betting pool, a swimming pool, a gene pool — all linguistically descended from *pullus*, from *\*pau-*, from a PIE root about smallness and youth.
### Summary of the Cognate Family
| Word | Meaning | Route from *\*pau-* | |------|---------|-------------------| | poultry | domestic fowl (category) | Latin *pullus* → OF *pouletrie* | | pullet | young hen | Latin *pullus* → OF *poulet* | | foal | young horse | Proto-Germanic *\*fulaz* | | paucity | scarceness | Latin *paucus* | | puerile | childish | Latin *puer* | | pediatrics | child medicine | Greek *pais/paidos* | | encyclopedia | complete education | Greek *enkyklios paideia* | | pool (betting) | collective stakes | French *poule* (hen) |