Meaning & use
fat hen
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Meaning
noununcountableBritishbiology
A common weed with soft, mealy, greyish-green leaves, found on farmland and gardens, whose young leaves and seeds can be eaten.
Grammar: Usually no an or plural in general use: fat hen grows everywhere.
Patterns
- fat hen leaves
Fat hen grows quickly in freshly dug soil.
She picked young fat hen leaves and cooked them like spinach.
Farmers often treat fat hen as a nuisance in vegetable fields.
Common combinations
- pick fat hen
- We picked fat hen by the edge of the field.
- fat hen leaves
- Fat hen leaves taste a little like spinach.
- fat hen seeds
- Ancient people ground fat hen seeds into flour.
- weed such as fat hen
- A weed such as fat hen spreads quickly in rich soil.
- wild fat hen
- Wild fat hen is a free food for foragers.
Synonyms and how they differ
- lamb's quarters
- This is the more common American name for the same plant.
- goosefoot
- This names the plant family, and is a wider term than fat hen.
- weed
- This is a general label for any unwanted plant, while fat hen names one particular species.
- wild spinach
- This is an informal foraging name for the edible leaves and is not exact.
Word family
Commonly confused: fat hen or fat chance?
fat hen vs fat chance
This is an ironic phrase meaning there is little hope, and has no link to the plant.
Practice
The forager gathered young leaves of ____, a common weed that can be cooked like spinach.
Choose one answer.
Fat hen is the edible weed with soft leaves. Hogweed and henbane are real plants but are poisonous or irritating, so they would not be recommended to cook.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fat hen”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.