pullet

Etymology

From Middle English polet, pulet, from Anglo-Norman pullet, Old French poulet (“young chicken”); polette (“young hen”), from poule (“hen”). Doublet of poult.

noun

1. A young hen, especially one less than a year old.
   They died not because the Pullets would not feed: but because the Devil foresaw their death, he contrived that abstinence in them. 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.11
   The dinner-hour being arrived, Black George carried her up a pullet, the squire himself … attending the door. 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 588
   he recommended that the patient … should be fed with chicken broth, and suggested that as all the poultry had gone to roost, Maggie would find a fat young pullet an easy capture. 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 187
   The writer complained that a fox had been the night before and killed three more of his pullets […]. 1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 195
2. (slang) A spineless person; a coward.
3. (obsolete, slang) A young girl.