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How would you propose describing something that has the consistency and flavor of chicken, and which doesn't denigrate the non-chicken product?

Quotes and asterisks are as you said not always sufficiently visible differentiators, but misspellings like "Chikken" or the like will usually be trademarked by a particular organization and not be available for widespread usage.

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Chicken-flavored _X_, where _X_ is either a brand name or some generic name for the category. At the end of the day, a chicken is an animal, and chicken is the name for the meat that comes from that animal - and hence, probably shouldn't be used for products that aren't derived from that animal.

First off, "chicken-flavored" is confusing, it usually means "flavored with chicken".

Secondly, language doesn't work that way so we end up soy milk, grasshopper pie, sweetbread, head cheese, cocoa butter, Bombay duck, Rocky Mountain oysters, coconut meat, Welsh rabbit, Mississippi caviar, chicken fingers, ladyfingers, Jerusalem artichokes, and Grapenuts.

"Imitation chicken".

Not too far of a leap from there to "Impossible chicken".

The real crime is that we are gonna have to think of a different name for non-euclidean chicken products.

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