Chicken Coop - Other Uses

Other Uses

• In American English the slang phrase flew the coop means someone who has fled before being sent to jail ("The police had a warrant for his arrest, so he flew the coop!").
• American truckers call weigh stations chicken coops.
• In the poem Ballad of John Silver by John Masefield there is a reference to drowning merchants "lamenting the absent chicken coop". In the age of sail, vessels on long voyages would often keep live poultry for meat and eggs within wooden coops stacked on deck. If a ship should sink or capsize these coops would typically come loose and float freely, making for an impromptu emergency floatation device. This maritime usage is archaic and may now be lost.
• A type of Soviet early warning radar were called Hen House by NATO.