quack
/kwæk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.06 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The vocalisation made by a duck.
verb
Of a duck, to make its characteristic vocalisation.
verb
Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
Intransitive verb
intj
A duck's quack.
noun
A fraudulent healer, especially a bombastic peddler in worthless treatments, a doctor who makes false diagnoses for monetary benefit, or an untrained or poorly trained doctor who uses fraudulent credentials to attract patients
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "Did you hear that duck make a quack?"
- "Twice a day she took them out to feed in the marshy places, let them waddle and gobble for an hour or two, and then drove them back and shut them up in a small dark shed to digest their meal, whence they gave forth occasionally a melancholy quack."
- "The more breadcrumbs I threw on the ground, the more they quacked."
- "Do you hear the ducks quack?"
- "That doctor is nothing but a lousy quack!"
- "1662, Rump: or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs Relating to Late Times, Vol. II, by ‘the most Eminent Wits’ Tis hard to say, how much these Arse-wormes do urge us, We now need no Quack but these Jacks for to purge us, …"
Etymology
From Middle English *quacken, queken (“to croak like a frog; make a noise like a duck, goose, or quail”), from quack, qwacke, quek, queke (“quack”, interjection and noun), also kek, keke, whec-, partly of imitative origin and partly from Middle Dutch quacken (“to croak, quack”), from Old Dutch *kwaken (“to croak, quack”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwakōn, from Proto-Germanic *kwakaną, *kwakōną (“to croak”), of imitative origin. Cognate with Saterland Frisian kwoakje, kwaakje (“to quack”), Middle Low German quaken (“to quack, croak”), German quaken (“to quack, croak”), Danish kvække (“to croak”), Swedish kväka (“to croak, quackle”), Norwegian kvekke (“to croak”), Icelandic kvaka (“to twitter, chirp, quack”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *quacken, quacken, *kwaken, *kwakōn, *kwakaną, -
Usage
Inflected Forms
quacks (plural)
quaake (alternative, obsolete)
quacks (present, singular)
quacking (participle, present)
quacked (participle, past)
quacked (past)
more quack (comparative)
quacker (comparative)
most quack (superlative)
quackest (superlative)