mother hen

English

A mother hen with chicks.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

mother hen (plural mother hens)

1. (literally) A female chicken who bears eggs or chicks.
2. (idiomatic) An outspoken and overprotective woman or person dealing with others' affairs; especially, an assertive matriarch.
   • 2022 October 10, Jenna Scherer, “House Of The Dragon drops its best episode yet”, in AV Club‎:

     Baela sends a letter by raven to her father Daemon spilling all the tea, and the news sends a now-pregnant Rhaenyra into mother-hen mode.

Hyponyms

• helicopter mom
• helicopter parent (female)

Related terms

• mother-hen (verb)
• henpecked

Translations

female chicken

Catalan: lloca (ca) f German: Glucke (de) f Hungarian: tyúkanyó (hu), kotlós (hu) Romanian: cloșcă (ro) Spanish: gallina (es) f

overprotective woman

Catalan: lloca (ca) f Dutch: moederkloek f French: mère poule (fr) f German: Glucke (de) f Irish: cearc ghoir f Italian: mamma chioccia f Russian: клу́ша (ru) f (klúša) Swedish: hönsmamma (sv) c

Verb

mother hen (third-person singular simple present mother hens, present participle mother henning, simple past and past participle mother henned)

1. Alternative form of mother-hen
   • 1990, Diane Ehrensaft, Parenting Together: Men and Women Sharing the Care of Their Children:

     Instead, the very "mother henning" implicit in their choice of "nurturance" over "intimacy" was what the they thought uniquely characterized their relationship to their child.

   • 2010, T.M. Nielsen, Equites, page 541:

     He's mother henning and driving me crazy.

   • 2011, Suzanne Forster, Unfinished Business:

     That was probably why the girls mother henned her a bit and sometimes made her feel like the runt of the litter.

See also

• hen