ducking

Pluralduckings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of duck.

   Ducking the reporters' questions, the senator hurried to her car.

   She is ducking under the fence to reach the open field.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. It is the participle in progressive verbs (she is ducking under the fence) and the gerund that names the action while still taking an object (ducking questions won't help). The verb behind it ranges widely: dodging a blow, dipping into water, bowing, evading a duty, and, in sound mixing, lowering one sound so another can be heard. With an article in front, as in a ducking, it has crossed into the nouns, such as a dunking in water.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An act of crouching or lowering the body, often to hide or to avoid being seen.

   One swift ducking under the counter and she was completely out of sight.

   His sudden ducking let the snowball sail harmlessly over his head.

   Similarcrouch, dodge, dip

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act of plunging a person or thing briefly under water.

   A cold ducking in the river was the usual penalty for losing the bet.

   She got a thorough ducking when her canoe tipped over near the bank.

   Similardunking, soaking, dousing, immersion, dip

   Note

   Here the ducking is done to someone, not by them. That is the line between this sense and the crouch to hide. It usually sits after give or get: you give someone a ducking, or you get one. Often it is deliberate, a punishment or a rough joke carried out in a river or pond, though an accidental soaking from a tipped canoe counts too.

4. 4
   adjectiveslangeuphemistichumorous

   Euphemistic form of fucking.

   I can't find my ducking phone anywhere in this mess.

   Turn off that ducking alarm before it wakes the whole house.

   Note

   A minced oath that phone keyboards invented. Predictive text and autocorrect kept swapping it in for the taboo word, and users adopted the mistake as a joke. Apple's Craig Federighi played on it in 2023 when he promised the keyboard would learn the word you actually meant. It fills the same slot as the original, before a noun as an intensifier, but it is humorous slang and still unmistakably points at what it replaces.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The practice of quietly leaving a small rubber duck on a stranger's parked Jeep as a kind gesture.

   Members of the club organize a ducking each spring, hiding rubber ducks on one another's Jeeps.

   After her own surprise, she paid it forward with some ducking, tucking a tiny duck under a wiper.

   Note

   A new coinage with its own lineage. The verb behind it means to leave a rubber duck on someone's vehicle, made from the toy's name rather than from the dodging verb. It most often appears as Jeep ducking, and it is likened to the Jeep wave owners trade on the road. Like hunting or shopping, it also names an outing: people go out ducking, handing out ducks in parking lots.

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