Turduckens

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Multiple dishes made by boning a chicken, placing it inside a duck, and then stuffing that duck inside a turkey before roasting
2. Layered poultry roasts in which a turkey encloses a duck that itself encloses a boned chicken, prepared as a novelty holiday meal
3. Elaborate nested birds, each boned and stuffed into the next larger one, cooked together as a festive centerpiece for large gatherings

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "turducken" is that its parts are three different birds, stacked inside one another. A boned chicken goes inside a boned duck, which goes inside a boned turkey, and the whole thing is roasted as a single bird. The name is a blend of "tur(key)", "duck" and "(chick)en", so each animal contributes a piece of the word as well as a layer of the meat. The turkey part carries its own odd history. English "turkey" originally named the guineafowl, which European traders brought through Turkey, and only later was transferred to the American bird. The "chicken" element comes from Old English "ċicen", and "duck" from Old English "dūce", all of them inherited native words. The plural "turduckens" is simply the regular plural of "turducken", and the word is a recent coinage, recorded in dictionaries as a blend of those three bird names.