Posts Tagged: duck

  • A duck or canard in a garden with purple background.

    A canard and half selling a duck

    I don’t know if you have heard the word “canard” used recently to refer to a false or fabricated news story or rumour. Perhaps there are too many such stories nowadays to even bother identifying them. The term originates from the French word for “duck” with several rather eccentric explanations to explain how it came […]

  • The most delightful fauxbia. Anatidaephobia originated from the Far Side comic by Gary Larson. He defined it as "the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you".

    Anatidaephobia an animal phobia

    The irrational fear of animals (for instance, spiders, insects, mice, cats, or snakes) can be a severe phobia according to psychiatrists. Phobia comes from the Greek word for fear, ‘phóbos’. Scientific research shows the frequency of common animal phobias is 5.5 % for ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and 3.5 % for arachnophobia (fear of spiders). […]

  • Teal (n.) "small freshwater duck," early 14c., of uncertain origin, probably from an unrecorded Old English word cognate with Middle Dutch teling "teal," Middle Low German "telink", from West Germanic "taili".

    TEAL TEAL TEAL—lining up the political ducks

    Independents win multiple seats in the Australian 2022 election The 2022 Australian election is over probably much to everyone’s relief. The undeniable word of the election though, has to be TEAL (but do you know what it really means?). The self-identified Teal candidates have taken multiple “blue-ribbon” seats off the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party’s […]

  • IMAGE: duck CAPTION: A pretty young duck asks her beautician for some lipstick. The beautician asks the duck how she would like to pay and the duck says "Just put it on my bill, please"

    Duck the question

    Ducks are the funniest Apparently ducks are the funniest animals of all. A “scientific” experiment run by psychologist Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire, UK, in 2002, found that it is the world’s funniest animal. “If you’re going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck,” Wiseman said. I did find […]