Definition of "spatchcock" []

• A dressed and split chicken for roasting or broiling on a spit. (noun)
• To prepare (a dressed chicken) for grilling by splitting open. (verb-transitive)
• To introduce or interpose, especially in a labored or unsuitable manner: "Some excerpts from a Renaissance mass are spatchcocked into Gluck's pallid Don Juan music” ( Alan Rich). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I've used chicken Maryland portions but you could easier use this for a whole chicken - it would be best if you "spatchcock" the chicken first, that just means you cut it straight down the backbone and flatten it out."
• ""We would have had to spatchcock together whatever coalition we could, but it was profoundly difficult," he said."
• "Try lemon-brandy spatchcock chicken and grilled pineapple and these assorted braai recipes as well as other traditional foods."