From a game of Chicken, to a game of Pool

Day 2,244, 04:54 Published in South Africa South Africa by Luc Praetor


A Game Of Chicken

Gambling in medieval France was a simple business. All you needed was some friends, a pot, and a chicken. In fact, you didn't need friends - you could do this with your enemies - but the pot and the chicken were essential.

First, each person puts an equal amount of money into the pot. Nobody should on any account make a joke about poultry sum. Shoo the chicken away to a reasonable distance. What is a reasonable distance? About a stone's throw.

Next, pick up a stone.

Now, you all take a turn hurling stones at the poor bird, which will squawk and flap and run about. The first person to hit the chicken wins all the money in the pot. You all then agree to never mention any of this to an animal rights campaigner.

That's how the French played a game of chicken. The French, though, being French, called it a game of poule, which is French for chicken. And the chap who had won all the money had therefore won the jeu de poule (game of chicken).

The term got transferred to other things. At card games, the pot of money in the middle of the table came to be known as the poule. English gamblers picked the term up and brought it back with them [to England] in the seventeenth century. They changed the spelling to pool, but they still had a pool of money in the middle of the table.

It should be noted that this pool of money has nothing to do with a body of water. Swimming pools, rock pools and Liverpools are utterly different things.

Back to gambling. When billiards became a popular sport, people started to gamble on it, and this variation was known as pool, hence shooting pool. Then finally, the poor French chicken broke free from the world of gambling, and soared majestically out into the clear air beyond.

On the basis that gamblers pooled their money, people started to pool their resources and even pool their cars into a car pool. Then they pooled their typists into a typing pool. Le chicken was free! And then he grew bigger than any of us, because, since the phrase was invented in 1941, we have all become part of the gene pool, which, etymologically [speaking], means that we are all little bits of chicken.


~ Another article consumed for eRepublik use

The Etymologicon - Mark Forsyth
A circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language