spatchcock

noun

1. (also, attributive)Poultry which has been cut along the spine and spread out for more even cooking.

   “Spatch cock, abbreviation of a diſpatch cock, an Iriſh diſh upon any ſudden occaſion. It is a hen juſt killed from the rooſt, or yard, and immediately ſkinned, ſplit, and broiled.”

   “He then slew it [a chicken], dipped the corpse in boiling water to loosen the feathers, which he stripped off in masses, cut through its breast longitudinally, and with the aid of an iron plate, placed over a charcoal fire, proceeded to make a spatchcock, or as it is more popularly termed, a "sudden death."”

verb

1. (transitive)To cut (poultry) along the spine and spread the halves apart for more even cooking.

   “For the party, he spatchcocked and grilled some chickens.”

   “Katniss [Everdeen] emerges alone, smeared in blood and muck and gnawing on the charred remains of a spatchcocked squirrel.”

2. (figuratively, transitive)Often followed by in or into: to interpolate or insert (something into another thing) awkwardly; to sandwich (something within another thing).

   “I, therefore, spatchcocked into the middle of that telegram a sentence in which I suggested it would be necessary to surrender the garrison, what he should do when he surrendered, and how he should do it.”

   “Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of [Philip] Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history?”

   “Instead of introducing a separate bill on the alternative vote referendum, which would have been supported by Labour in a vote through parliament, the government has spatchcocked it together with the most blatant gerrymander of parliamentary constituency boundaries since the days of the rotten boroughs.”

   “We would have had to spatchcock together whatever coalition we could, but it was profoundly difficult, […]”