Ducks

How to spell ducks

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ducks

What does ducks mean?

1. nounMore than one duck, the common web-footed waterbird often found on ponds and rivers.
2. verbLowers the head or body quickly to avoid something, or evades a duty or question.

Ducks in a sentence

• noun

  The children threw bread to the ducks on the village pond.

• verb

  She always ducks under the low beam at the foot of the stairs.

• noun

  Several ducks waddled across the path toward the lake.

• verb

  He routinely ducks the difficult questions in every meeting.

Where does ducks come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Old English noun 'duce', which named the familiar waterfowl and was itself related to the verb 'ducan', meaning 'to dive' or 'to dip down quickly under the surface'. The bird was effectively named for what it does: a creature that bobs its head beneath the water. From that same diving sense English kept a separate verb, 'to duck', meaning to lower the head or body suddenly to avoid being seen or hit, and by extension to dodge an obligation. The bird sense and the bobbing-down sense have travelled side by side since at least the medieval period, which is why both still share the spelling. The plural and the third-person verb form are both made simply by adding -s, so the spelling holds no hidden trap; the only thing to remember is the hard 'ck' before the -s.

How the word is built

• duck (the bird or the action of dipping down)
• -s (plural noun or third-person singular verb suffix)