A young or small chicken; a chick or small bird, sometimes used as an endearing term.
From 'chick' (Old English cicen) with the diminutive suffix '-ling' (Old English -ling), which creates a sense of smallness or youth. The '-ling' suffix appears in words like 'duckling' and 'gosling' to denote young animals.
Languages across the world use diminutive suffixes like '-ling' to express affection or show that something is small, and English speakers immediately understand that a 'chickling' is a baby chicken because our brains recognize these ancient word patterns—it's like we have built-in language intuition.
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