quack

Pluralquacks

Formsquacks, quacking, quacked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The short, harsh call that a duck makes.

   A single quack echoed across the still pond at dawn.

   The duck let out a rapid series of quacks when the dog approached.

   Note

   An echoic word, built to sound like what it names. Middle English had quack and quek, partly imitative and partly from Middle Dutch quacken, "to croak, quack." It is a different word from the name for a fraudulent healer, which came by its own route through quacksalver. So a sentence about a doctor's quack needs context to land. The plural is regular: a series of quacks.

2. 2
   verbintransitive

   To produce the harsh, repeated call characteristic of a duck.

   The ducks quack noisily as soon as feeding time arrives.

   Something in the reeds quacked twice and then went silent.

   Note

   Middle English quacken was less particular about the animal. It could mean to croak like a frog or to call like a goose or quail, and Middle Dutch quacken likewise covered croaking. Today the verb belongs to ducks and takes no object: ducks quack, the more they quacked. Loudness and frequency are carried by an adverb or by the surrounding clause.

3. 3
   nounderogatorycountable

   A fraudulent healer, especially one who loudly peddles worthless treatments or uses fake credentials to attract trusting patients.

   The traveling quack promised his bottled tonic could cure any disease.

   Investigators exposed the clinic's lead physician as a quack with forged diplomas.

   Similarcharlatan, fraud, impostor, fake, swindler

   Note

   A clipping of the older quacksalver, a word of Dutch origin, and only distantly related to the duck's call. It is an insult, not a neutral description: calling a named practitioner a quack is an accusation. William Derham's Physico-theology (1720) has the Quack slipping privately to town. In Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present (1843), the quack is a public impostor mistaken for a hero.

4. 4
   adjective

   Falsely presented as having the power to heal or cure.

   The pamphlet advertised a quack treatment for arthritis.

   Authorities banned several quack devices that claimed to cure cancer.

   Similarfake, bogus, fraudulent, sham, phony

   Oppositegenuine, legitimate, proven

   Note

   The adjective usually stands before a noun, as in quack medicine or a quack doctor, where it brands the thing as bogus. It can even be compared as quacker and quackest. Henry D. Estabrook in 1916 ranges "from the quack doctor to the quacker promoter and the quackest oracle of fate." The Prospect before Us (1948) speaks of "the last and quackest of his doctors."

5. 5
   nounderogatoryfigurativelycountable

   A charlatan or incompetent practitioner in any profession.

   The startup's so-called security guru turned out to be a quack.

   Real engineers dismissed him as a quack peddling junk science.

   Similarcharlatan, fraud, fake, impostor, phony

   Note

   The insult left medicine early. John Ford's The Fancies, Chast and Noble, written about 1635–1636, already mocks someone as "the very quaik of fashions," a pretender in dress rather than in physic. The figurative use keeps all the scorn of the fraudulent-healer meaning, and the field is often named, as in a quack of fashions. It charges fraud or incompetence, so it is never a mild criticism.

6. 6
   interjection

   Used to represent or imitate the call of a duck.

   Quack! she said, mimicking the bird for her delighted toddler.

   From behind the curtain came a sudden, theatrical "Quack!"

7. 7
   nounslangderogatoryhumorouscountable

   A doctor; a slang term used jokingly or dismissively rather than as a true charge of fraud.

   I finally booked an appointment with the quack down the road.

   She told the quack her back had been aching for weeks.

   Similardoctor, doc, medic

   Note

   Here the insult turns into banter. Patients use it of their own doctors, mildly and with a grin, grumbling that the quack wants them to quit smoking. The joke works only when the listener knows no fraud is meant. It suits friends and family. In a complaint or a formal review it would read as a charge of fraud.

8. 8
   verbintransitive

   To practice fraudulent medicine; to deceive people with worthless cures.

   He quacked for years before the authorities finally shut down his practice.

   Charlatans quack wherever desperate patients can be found.

   Note

   The verb from the fraud side of the word. Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) shows its natural company: ignorant fellows "quacking and tampering in Physick," with their bills pasted on posts and street corners. Its forms are identical to the duck's verb: quacks, quacking, quacked. Only the subject tells them apart. A duck quacks at the pond; a charlatan quacks for money.

9. 9
   verbintransitive

   In beekeeping, used of a queen bee: to give out a shrill sound at certain stages of its development.

   Newly developed queens quack while still confined to their cells.

   Beekeepers suspect swarming is near when the queens quack and pipe.

   Note

   A beekeeper's word, borrowed from the duck for a call a young queen makes. The quacking comes from a virgin queen still sealed in her cell. It is distinct from piping, the call of a queen already out in the open, and both sounds figure in the colony's signaling before a swarm. Like the farmyard verb, it takes no object: queens quack, but they do not quack anything.

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