"a to the Scottish story…printed in Chambers" (see above) and gives the characters approximately the same names as in Chambers. Comparing the different versions, we find that in the Scots and English stories the animals want "to tell the king" that the skies are falling; while in the American story, as in the Danish, they are not given any specific motivation. In all versions they are eaten by the fox, although in different circumstances. Idiomatic usage The name "Chicken Little" and the fable's central phrase, The sky is falling! have been applied to people accused of being unreasonably afraid, or those trying to incite an unreasonable fear in those around them. The first use of the name "Chicken Little" to "one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification" recorded by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is in 1895, but idiomatic use of the name significantly predates that attestation. In fact, this usage is recorded in the United States very soon after the publication of Chandler's illustrated children's book in 1840. Already, in 1842, a journal article about the Government of Haiti referred to "Chicken Little" in an offhand manner. An "oration" delivered to the city of Boston on July 4, 1844, contains the passage: Fearmongering whether justified or not can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as "inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis". It has also been defined as "a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions". The term began appearing in the 1950s and the phenomenon has been noted in many different societal contexts. Adaptations Walt Disney Animation Studios has made two versions of the story. The first was Chicken Little, a 1943 animated short released during World War II as one of a series produced at the request of the U.S. government for the purpose of discrediting Nazism. It tells a variant of the parable in which Foxy Loxy takes the advice of a book on psychology (on the original 1943 cut, it is Mein Kampf) by striking the least intelligent first. Dim-witted Chicken Little is convinced by him that the sky is falling and whips the farmyard into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox manipulates for his own benefit. The dark comedy is used as an allegory for the idea that fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives. It is also one of the versions of the