dead duck
4
8.6
- noun
- Informal
:
caso perdido
- If we don't improve our sales soon, the company will be a dead duck in the market.
But when the wiretaps were not suppressed, she said, I'm a dead duck with, you know, all these colourful language.
- But when the wiretaps were not suppressed, she said, I'm a dead duck with, you know, all these colourful language.
Examples
-
You've already scared off big labor and if you scare off big business, you're a dead duck.
-
He's a dead duck.
Fiction book (1991) -
I'm a dead duck there.
-
As a matter of fact, he's a dead duck.
-
Until the recent economic implosion, the Labour leader looked like a dead duck.
Blog text (13) -
In any case, you're a dead duck!
Blog text (2) -
If we don't make this delivery, we're gonna get fired, and Phil here, oh, he's a dead duck for sure.
-
McCaskill is a dead duck if we dump Akin.
Blog text (15) -
After failing the last exam, she felt like a dead duck in her studies.
-
With all the issues in this project, it seems like we're facing a dead duck situation.
Synonyms
405
2.7
A person who does not succeed at things they try
14
4.7
Something that fails to work or please people
1
8.2
Something that fails completely
Antonyms
How Doomed
Surface Forms
Morphology
dead + duck
Although 'dead' clearly signals lifelessness or complete failure, combining it with 'duck' yields an idiomatic sense ('doomed' or 'certain to fail') that is not strictly predictable from the literal constituents — a B1 learner would plausibly first interpret a literal dead bird. The adjective 'dead' provides a partial clue (something useless or finished), but the specific idiomatic meaning requires exposure, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Dead duck may come from old market stalls where a dead duck that could not be sold was useless and unwanted. That's why the phrase now means 'certain to fail'.