The landfowl, Galloanserae, as the name suggests are primarily ground-dwelling chicken-like species and include the edible (and often domesticated) species: guineafowl, new world quail, quail, pheasants, partridges, grouse, peafowl, turkey and chickens. The waterfowl, Anseriformes, includes: geese and ducks.

As opposed to "fowl", "poultry" is a term for any kind of domesticated bird or bird captive-raised for meat, eggs, or feathers; ostriches, for example, are sometimes kept as poultry, but are neither gamefowl nor waterfowl. In colloquial speech, however, the term "fowl" is often used near-synonymously with "poultry", and many languages do not distinguish between "poultry" and "fowl". Nonetheless, the fact that the Galliformes and Anseriformes most likely form a monophyletic group makes a distinction between "fowl" and "poultry" warranted.

The historic difference in English is due to the Germanic/Latin split word pairs characteristic of Middle English; the word 'fowl' is of Germanic origin (cf. Old English "fugol", West Frisian fûgel, Dutch vogel, German Vogel, Swedish fågel, Danish/Norwegian fugl), whilst 'poultry' is of Latin pullus ("chicken") via Norman French origin poule ("chicken"); the presence of an initial /p/ in poultry and an initial /f/ in fowl is due to Grimm's Law.

Interestingly, along with the Palaeognathae (a group including ostriches), the fowl Galloanserae is the only other group not included in the Neoaves (literally the 'new birds') as their immediate ancestors survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (ie they were around with the dinosaurs).

Fowl are frequently kept for both meat and eggs. Chickens, by far, are the most heavily consumed and farmed out of all of them. Other fowl commonly used in cooking include ducks, geese, turkeys and quail. Various species of fowl are hunted for both sport and food. Pheasants have been widely introduced and naturalized outside of their native range in Asia to Europe and North America for use as food and sport.