chicken or egg

A form of chicken and egg — A situation or case in which it is difficult to distinguish cause and effect, having a circular character.

Meanings

nounchicken or egg (uncountable)
  1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of chicken and egg.

    The dynamically naive would be worrying about the "chicken or egg" of this causal process.

    1993, Nordal Åkerman, editor, The Necessity of Friction, Physica-Verlag, →ISBN, page 287
    2 more examples

    What is suggestive about both positions, for present purposes, is that modernism and the avant-garde are understood as belonging to a common history of supersession. The differences between them consist not in the sequencing itself, so much as in the evaluation respectively of the chicken or egg of modernism and the avant-garde (or the reverse) in a continuous process of renewal and stability.

    2013, Peter Brooker, “General Introduction: Modernity, Modernisms, Magazines”, in Peter Brooker, Sascha Bru, Andrew Thacker, Christian Weikop, editors, The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, volumes III (Europe, 1880–1940), part I, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 9

    This is likely a recursive, two-way relationship—the “chicken or egg” of institutions and development referred to previously.

    2016, Paavo Monkkonen, Lucas Ronconi, “Comparative Evidence on Urban Land-Use Regulation Bureaucracy in Developing Countries”, in Eugenie L. Birch, Shahana Chattaraj, Susan M. Wachter, editors, Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work, Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, part I (Comparative Perspectives), page 44
Cite this entry
APA

chicken or egg. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chicken%20or%20egg

MLA

“chicken or egg.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chicken%20or%20egg. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “chicken or egg,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chicken%20or%20egg.

Source: chicken or egg on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.