Mother Carey's chickens
Preserved but no longer current.
Stormy petrels. Mother Carey is mata cara, dear mother. The French call these birds oiseaux de Notre Dame or aves Sanctce Maria. See Captain Marryat's Poor Jack, where the superstition is fully related.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “Mother Carey's chickens” mean?
Stormy petrels. Mother Carey is mata cara, dear mother. The French call these birds oiseaux de Notre Dame or aves Sanctce Maria. See Captain Marryat's Poor Jack, where the superstition is fully related.
Is “Mother Carey's chickens” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.