Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
cold duck

cold duck

9.3
A pink sparkling wine that people make by mixing red and white wines and serve cold
  • noun
  • /koʊld dʌk/
  • Archaic
translation icon : cold duck
  • At the party, everyone sipped their cold duck as the sun set.

Examples

  • More cold duck?

    Just One of the Guys (1985)

  • We enjoyed a bottle of cold duck while celebrating my birthday.

  • You should try cold duck; it’s a refreshing drink for warm days.

Surface Forms

cold duck singular
cold ducks plural

Morphology

cold + duck

Although 'cold' signals a chilled temperature, the noun 'duck' (an animal) gives no cue to a type of wine, so the combined meaning as a specific pink sparkling wine is not derivable from the constituents. This is a lexicalized name for a beverage whose origin and sense are language-specific, so a B1 learner knowing the words would not predict the wine meaning.

Etymology

One popular story says the name cold duck comes from an old German joke for a simple mixed wine. Imagine a chilled bottle with the funny words cold and duck, and that picture helped the name stick for the pink, sparkling wine people serve cold.