The story
- Middle English · inherited fromchykwed
- English todaychickweed
From Middle English chykwed, chykewode, chike wed, chikewed, chekwede, a variant of chykynwede, chekyn-wede, cheken-wede (literally “chicken-weed”), equivalent to chick + weed. Etymonline claims the name was apparently applied to many plants fit for chicken feed, which were called in Old English cicene mete (“chicken food”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.