How would I call someone a chicken (as in, they’re easily frightened) in other languages besides English? Is a fearful hispanophone “un pollo”? A fearful a Germanophone “un huhn”?
Spanish: Gallina (“Nadie me dice gallina” said Marty McFly in the spanish dub.)
Rioplatense Spanish: “Cagón” (literally “prone to shitting himself”), “Pecho Frio” (Cold Chest).
I don’t think the “chicken==coward” idiom is universal. But it appears to be widespread in Western cultures.
Brings to mind this…
French : une poule mouillée (“a wet hen”).
German: Hosenscheisser
(a pant-shitter)
Also German, and less pungent: Angsthase (literally: “fear hare”), Bangbüx (North German only, “fearful pants”), Hasenfuß (“hare’s foot”).
To flee in fear: das Hasenpanier ergreifen (“to seize the hare’s battle standard”).
In Cantonese there are quite a few ways of calling someone a coward, but one referring to an animal is “Suk Tau Wu Gwai”, which means “shrinking head turtle”.
In Afrikaans, it’s bangbroek, same meaning (see also: English scaredy-pants)
Also, papbroek (“soft pants”)
Dutch:
Angsthaas (fear hare)
Bange schijter (scared shitter)
In my not so far Northern dialect (Westphalian), it’s “Bangebuxe”. There’s also “Schisser”, just “shitter”. Yeah, there’s something to it that we are mostly quite scatological when it comes to colloquialisms and swear words.
In Hebrew it’s shafan, “rabbit”.
… sort of. Technically, shafan means hyrax, but colloquially the word is also used to refer to the rabbit or the hare, animals that are in no way related to the hyrax. Don’t ask.
In Welsh, it’s cachgi /kaxgi/, which is a compound of cach “shit” and ci “dog” (as in corgi).
In Danish you can say kylling (chicken) or bangebuks (scaredy pants).
Japanese would be yowamushi or “weak insect”