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canard (kuh-NAHRD) - n., a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor.
Also some aeronautic senses, such as a control and stabilization surface in front of the main wings, and a culinary sense, a duck intended for cooking. This last is a separate importation of the original French word, which means duck. How that came to mean the main sense is the big story: in the 16th century, vendre des canards à moitié, literally to half-sell a duck, was a colorful idiom for to cheat/swindle, the origins of which are lost. From this, in French canard came to mean hoax/fabrication, and it's that sense that English took over in the 1840s.
---L.
Also some aeronautic senses, such as a control and stabilization surface in front of the main wings, and a culinary sense, a duck intended for cooking. This last is a separate importation of the original French word, which means duck. How that came to mean the main sense is the big story: in the 16th century, vendre des canards à moitié, literally to half-sell a duck, was a colorful idiom for to cheat/swindle, the origins of which are lost. From this, in French canard came to mean hoax/fabrication, and it's that sense that English took over in the 1840s.
---L.
