canard

English
WOTD – 5 September 2012

Etymology

Borrowed from French canard (“duck, hoax”).

etymology note

The primary English meaning of canard comes from the Medieval French expression “vendre un canard à moitié”, which literally means “to sell half a duck” or “to half-sell a duck”. This was perhaps the punch line to a joke. Eventually the punch line came to stand for the joke and then finally the word alone stood for the whole concept. The story may perhaps have gone like this: A duck seller is successful and content as the only duck seller on a street, selling his ducks for eight francs each. A new duck seller moves in across the street who steals all the business by offering his ducks for seven francs each. Then a price war ensues, back and forth, until the new duck seller is down to three francs for a duck. The original duck seller is beside himself with worry and frustration, but finally he puts up a big sign that says, “Two francs” and then in small print at the bottom “for half a duck.” In this way, to half-sell ducks may have come to mean tricking people with something that is literally true but misleading. It has this same metaphorical meaning in French. Now in English, it simply means anything that is deliberately misleading, a hoax.

Pronunciation

Noun

canard (plural canards)

A pair of canards (sense 3) on a fighter jet
  1. A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.
    • 2005 August 29, The New Yorker, page 78:
      It’s a cinch, now that Spurling has cleared away a century’s worth of misapprehensions and canards.
    • 2006, Arundhati Roy, Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire, page 40:
      There is a notion gaining credence that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live together happily inside a John Lennon song (Imagine there's no country...). This is a canard.
    • 2014 August 20, “Why Jews are worried [print version: International New York Times, 22 August 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times‎:
      [W]hen a Hamas spokesman recently stood by his statement that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children for their matzos – one of the oldest anti-Semitic canards around – European elites were largely silent.
    • 2021 November 17, Anthony Lambert, “How do we grow the leisure market?”, in RAIL, number 944, page 37:
      It is a canard trotted out by lazy or tendentious journalists that nationalised British Railways lacked entrepreneurial flair.
  2. (aviation) A type of aircraft in which the primary horizontal control and stabilization surfaces are in front of the main wing.
  3. (aviation, by extension) A horizontal control and stabilization surface located in front of the main wing of an aircraft.
    Synonym: foreplane
  4. (transport, engineering, by extension) Any small winglike structure on a vehicle, usually used for stabilization.

Synonyms
  • (false or misleading report or story): hoax

Translations
false or misleading report or story

Anagrams

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from French canard.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kaːˈnaːr/
  • Audio(file)
  • Hyphenation: ca‧nard

Noun

canard m (plural canards, diminutive canardje n)

  1. (dialectal, East and West Flanders, possibly obsolete) duck
  2. canard, hoax

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French canard, from Old French canart, quanart (“duck”), from cane (“female duck", also "boat”) + -ard. Perhaps ultimately from the same imitative root as caner (“cackle, prattle”) or from Old French cane (“boat, ship; waterbird”), from Middle Low German kane (“boat”), from Old Saxon *kano, from Proto-West Germanic *kanō, from Proto-Germanic *kanô (“boat, vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *gan-, *gandʰ- (“vessel, tub”).

Compare Norwegian kane (“swan-shaped vessel”), German Kahn (“boat”), Old Norse kæna (“little boat”), and possibly Old Norse knǫrr (“ship”) (whence also Late Latin canardus (“ship”), from Germanic; and Old English cnearr (“merchant ship”)). Related to French canot (“little boat”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ka.naʁ/
  • (Paris)
    (file)
  • (Paris)
    (file)
  • (La Tuque)
    (file)
  • (Canada)
    (file)
  • Rhymes: -aʁ
  • Homophone: canards

Noun

canard m (plural canards, feminine cane)

  1. duck (of either sex)
    • 1917, Hans Christian Andersen, translated by André Theuriet, Le vilain petit canard:
      Le pauvre canard en eut assez de toutes ces railleries et il décida de s’en aller.
      The poor duck had had enough of these taunts and he decided to leave.
    • 2005, Erik Verdonck, Foie gras & canard: Les meilleures recettes d'Upignac, page 12:
      Aujourd’hui, le réseau de restaurants franchisés permet de faire connaître d’autres produits à base de canard au grand public et d’inspirer les gourmets et les cuisiniers amateurs.
      Todau, the network of franchised restaurants make it possible to promote other duck products to the wider public, and to inspire gourmets and amateur cooks.
  2. drake (male duck)
    • 1836, M. Mattheu Bonafous, “Économie usuelle”, in De la culture des murier et de l'éducation des vers a soie, page 756:
      Il est facile de distinguer le canard commun de la cane. Le mâle est plus gros que la femelle; il a aussi la voix plus forte et le plumage plus éclatant; mais le signe le plus saillant, c’est un assemblage de plusiers plumes retroussées que le mâle portes sur le croupion, à l’origine de la queue. Le canard et la cane sont propres à l’accouplement jusqu’à trois ou quatre ans; il faut les remplacer à cet âge par des sujest plus jeunes. Un canard suffit pour dix ou douze canes.
      It's easy to distinguish the common drake from the hen. The male is larger than the female; he also has a stronger voice and more dazzling plumage; but the most salient sign is an assemblage of several upturned feathers that the male bears on the rump at the origin of the tail. The drake and the hen are fit for mating up to three or four years; you must replace them at that age for younger subjects. One drake suffices for ten or twelve hens.
  3. canard, hoax
    • 1844, Honoré de Balzac, “Monographie de la Presse parisienne”, in La grande ville nouveau tableau de Paris comique, critique et philosophique, page 146:
      Ce serait être incomplet que de ne pas faire observer ici que Gaspard Hauser n’a jamais existé, pas plus que Clara Wendel et le brigand Schubry. Paris, la France et l’Europe ont cru à ces canards.
      It would be incomplete not to mention here that Kaspar Hauser never existed, no more than Clara Wendel and the brigand Schubry. Paris, France, and Europe believed these canards.
    • 1874, Jules Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, sourced from :
      Les canards eurent là une belle occasion de pondre des oeufs de toute couleur.
      The tabloids found it a fine opportunity for hatching all sorts of hoaxes.
  4. (slang, informal) newspaper
    Le Canard enchaîné
    • 2000, Gérard Valbert, La saison des armours, page 18:
      Usant de gros titres, le canard met en garde la population.
      Using headlines, the paper warns the population.
    • 2015, Jérémy Bouquin, Entrailles, page 6:
      Duval ne répond pas, il a lu le canard, cette affaire de cambriole.
      Duval doesn't respond, he read the paper, this affair of the burglary.
  5. (slang, informal) a man who complies with every desire of his partner in order to avoid conflict
  6. (slang, informal) a man who tries to attract women by offering them gifts
  7. lump of sugar dunked in coffee or brandy
  8. (music, colloquial) off-note

Derived terms
Related terms

Descendants
  • → Dutch: canard
  • → English: canard
  • → Italian: canard
  • → Portuguese: canard
  • → Vietnamese: tin vịt (calque)

Further reading

Anagrams

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French canard.

Noun

canard m (invariable)

  1. canard, hoax

Portuguese

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French canard.

Noun

canard m (plural canards)

  1. (aeronautics) canard (type of aircraft)
  2. (transport, engineering) canard (winglike structure on a vehicle)
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