ducks and drakes

1 9.9

A game of throwing a flat stone so it skips on calm water

noun

Archaic

: piedra que salta

On a sunny afternoon, the children played ducks and drakes by the tranquil lake.

Examples

Skill at ducks and drakes often depends on the angle and speed of the throw.
Can you teach me how to play ducks and drakes?
He boasted that he could set a record for ducks and drakes with his favorite flat stone.
The children played ducks and drakes by the lake.
On a sunny afternoon, the children played ducks and drakes by the tranquil lake.
Skill at ducks and drakes often depends on the angle and speed of the throw.
He boasted that he could set a record for ducks and drakes with his favorite flat stone.

Surface Forms

ducks and drakes plural

Morphology

duck + and + drake

The sense 'a game of skipping stones' is not transparently built from 'duck' and 'drake' (both birds) plus 'and'—there is no literal cue for throwing stones or a game in the constituent meanings. This is a historical/idiomatic name for a pastime and thus culture-specific and non-compositional, so a B1 learner who knows the words but has not encountered the expression would not be able to derive its meaning.

Etymology

Ducks and drakes comes from an old children's game of throwing a flat stone so it skips over the water. People said each splash or bounce looked like little ducks or a drake running across the surface, so the name came to mean 'skipping stones'.