Wesly Brogdon? Dea Reed? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Bobby Foster? Dean Martin? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: When the answer to a question is obviously affirmative the respondent can employ a rhetorical phrase from a family that includes these three examples:
Is water wet?
Can birds fly?
Is the Pope a Catholic?
When the answer is obviously negative the respondent can employ one of these phrases:
Is Billy Graham Catholic?
Does a chicken have lips?
The answer to these two questions is clearly no. Billy Graham was a Southern Baptist minister. Chickens have beaks instead of lips.
Oddly, the latter phrase is now ambiguous. Some people believe it means “obviously, no”, and other people believe it means “obviously, yes”. Would you please explore the history of this expression?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in 1963 within the yearbook of a high school in Arvin, California. A student selected the statement to appear as his personal catchphrase. Unfortunately, the limited context did not delineate the meaning: 1
BROGDON, WESLY — 2. Track, Football. 4. Ratty cars. 6. “Does a chicken have lips.”
In July 1965 a version of the phrase appeared in “The Washington Daily News” of Washington D.C. within an article about a high school basketball match. A coach emphasized the upbeat aspects of the competition, and a spectator disagreed by using a sarcastic instance of the phrase:2
… “Actually this league is only for learning basketball and for letting the kids have fun. That’s all.”
That’s what Wootten said. But when a spectator heard it, he didn’t quite agree. “Sure, sure” said the spectator, “and a chicken has lips.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In November 1965 the newspaper of Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Massachusetts printed the saying. The paper posed a provocative question for students: “Do you think the male is innately superior to the female?” Lasell Junior College was a women’s educational institution. The student Dea Reed answered no, and she emphasized the answer by reciting the phrase:3
Don’t want to offend, but I mean, does a chicken have lips?
In June 1967 newspaper in Springfield, Ohio printed a letter to the editor which contained the saying although the meaning was unclear:4
I have a question for the editor, do chickens have lips?
In March 1969 the “Los Angeles Times” of California published a piece about U.S. basketball player Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). He used the phrase when he decisively answered “No” to a question:5
Speaking of that, will you have a manager?
“Does a chicken have lips? I’m going to hire help, man. Just hire ’em, when I need ’em. You know you can hire the best lawyer in town for $50 an hour, and I won’t have to be giving up 10 percent of my whole income. You hip to it?”
Also, in March 1969 “The Washington Post” published an article about U.S. boxer Bobby Foster. He used the phrase when he emphatically answered “No” to a question:6
Asked if anyone had helped him back in those days (which finally became so lean he quit the ring and went to work in a bomb factory in York, Pa.), Foster just snorts: “Do a chicken have lips?”
In February 1972 the “Evening Capital” newspaper of Annapolis, Maryland printed a group of Valentine’s Day messages in the classified ads section. One message said the following. The message was ambiguous. It might have been comically positive:7
SNUFF do I love you? I’ll tell you true, do chickens have lips? Do pythons have hips? Maggie. F-14
In July 1975 the phrase was used in an unambiguously positive manner by a well-known singer:8
Does Dean Martin really drink? Does a chicken have lips? “Of course I drink,” says Dean.
In December 1975 a newspaper in Duluth, Minnesota printed an instance with a positive meaning:9
I asked a friend, who came to Duluth, every summer for fishing and boating recreation if he intended continuing to do so. “Do chickens have lips?” he asks.
An entry from 2021 on the “Urban Dictionary” website commented on the ambiguity of the phrase:10
does a chicken have lips?
an off-hand method of answering in the affirmative, although most consider it to be confusing and idiotic because a chicken does not, in fact, have lips, and therefore its usage should be avoided.
In conclusion, the rhetorical phrase “Does a chicken have lips?” was circulating by 1963. The initial meaning was “obviously, no”, but by 1975 the phrase sometimes meant “obviously, yes”. Today, the most common meaning is “obviously, yes”. Thus, this phrase is confusing to people who realize that chickens do not have lips.
Image Notes: Picture of a chicken from Brett Jordan at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to quotation expert Nigel Rees whose inquiry about the phrase “Is the Pope a Catholic?” led QI to explore the family of expressions called sarcastic interrogatives. Also, thanks to slang expert Jonathan Lighter who shared his research on the phrase “Does a chicken have lips?” which included valuable citations such as the 1963 high school yearbook occurrence.
- 1963, Praeterita: High School Yearbook, Senior Index, Quote Page 41, Column 1, Published for Arvin High School of Arvin, California. (Verified with scans; Internet Archive) ↩︎
- 1965 July 17, The Washington Daily News, Kiernan’s Corner: A Messy Press in an Asphalt Shoe Box by Mike Kiernan, Quote Page 16, Column 2 and 3, Washington D.C. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1965 November 18, The Lasell News, Section: Opinion, (Opinion from Dea Reed, freshman), Quote Page 2, Column 4, Auburndale, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans; Internet Archive) ↩︎
- 1967 June 28, Springfield Daily News, Section: Letter to the Editor, Letter title: Inefficient Operations, Letter from: Archey B. Farlow of Springfield, Ohio, Quote Page 8, Column 7, Springfield, Ohio. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1969 March 16, Los Angeles Times, Section: West Magazine, Fiendish in the Valley with Lew Alcindor by Ardie Ivie, Start Page 30, Quote Page 32, Column 2, Los Angeles, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1969 March 23, The Washington Post, Section: Potomac, Bobby Foster’s Green Power: The Champ Goes Suburban by Shelby Coffey III, Start Page 13, Quote Page 14, Column 1, Washington, D.C. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1972 February 14, Evening Capital, Classified Section, Quote Page 13, Column 1, Annapolis, Maryland. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1975 July 6, The Commercial Appeal, Section: TV This Week, He Knows When To Stop by Robert L. Rose (Chicago Daily News Service), Quote Page TV-3, Column 1, Memphis, Tennessee. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1975 December 2, Duluth Herald, Section: Open Court, Letter title: For an early cure of Lake Superior, Letter from: G.L. of Duluth, Quote Page 4, Column 1, Duluth, Minnesota. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- Website: Urban Dictionary, Article title: does a chicken have lips?, Article author: thegreatgreenarkleseizure, Date on website: December 12, 2021, Website description: Crowd sourced slang dictionary. (Accessed urbandictionary.com on November 12, 2025) link ↩︎