Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A young fowl, especially a young turkey.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To kill poultry.
  • noun The young or chick of the domestic fowl, turkey, pheasant, guinea-fowl, and similar birds.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A young chicken, partridge, grouse, or the like.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A young table-bird: turkey, partridge, grouse etc.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pult, young fowl, young chicken, short for polet, from Old French poulet, diminutive of poule, polle, hen; see poulard.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English pulte, from Old French poulet ("young fowl"), diminutive of poule ("hen"), from Latin pulla.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word poult.

Examples

  • Joe made a chirping, clucky noise, the poult looked him square in the eye, "and something very unambiguous happened in that moment".

    TV review: My Life as a Turkey 2011

  • That's a turkey poult, Pa explains to his appalled wife.

    Pipers Piping, Drummers Drumming Meghan Cox Gurdon 2011

  • So Joe put his face down to the level of the opening eggs and the first poult emerged, wet and confused.

    TV review: My Life as a Turkey 2011

  • The kee kee is the sound a poult makes because it's too young to “break” a yelp.

    Autumn Gobblers: How To Hunt Turkeys in the Fall 2008

  • Shooting a hen is no more wrong than shooting an antlerless deer, and after you've had a 10-pound hen or even a 6-pound poult roasted whole for Thanksgiving, a Butterball will never satisfy you again.

    Autumn Gobblers: How To Hunt Turkeys in the Fall 2008

  • So Sayyar sprang up and going out to the desert caught an ostrich-poult and brought it to his lord.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Also the general idea is that no blood will impose upon the exerts, or jury of matrons, except that of a pigeon-poult which exactly resembles hymeneal blood — when not subjected to the microscope.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • He persisted in dressing, as in his youth, in black silk stockings, shoes with gold buckles, breeches of black poult-de-soie, and a black coat, adorned with the red rosette.

    Ursula 2006

  • Countrey under a hedge; and beside all these excellent parts, shee was crooke backt, poult footed, and went like a lame Mare in

    The Decameron 2004

  • She declared that for the last three years every turkey poult had gone, and that at last she was beginning to feel it.

    The American Senator 2004

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • (noun) - A young turkey, fit for the table but not fully grown--a turkey-poult. In Scottish, pout is a young partridge or moor-fowl. From French poulet, a pullet. --Edward Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, 1823

    February 11, 2018