quacking

Pluralquackings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of quack.

   A flock of mallards kept quacking beneath the willow at dawn.

   The ducks started quacking the moment the farmer rattled the feed bucket.

   Note

   One spelling, several jobs. It builds the progressive (the ducks are quacking) and the gerund (the quacking startled them), and it carries every meaning of quack, not only the duck's. It can describe a queen bee's high-pitched sound at certain stages of development, or the practice of quackery, fraudulent medicine. Edward Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History (1839) compares a squirrel's bark to "the quacking voice of a duck," a use close to the adjective.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The combined sound produced by a group of ducks calling together.

   An impatient quacking echoed across the marsh before the first light.

   The morning quacking carried all the way up to the farmhouse kitchen.

   Note

   Here the word names a noise in the mass rather than a single call. A quack is one duck's sound, while quacking is the din of many together, and it can still take the plural quackings. When the noise is felt as something the ducks are doing, the word is really the gerund of the verb. As a noun, it names the sound itself.

3. 3
   adjective

   Producing duck-like sounds, or inclined to produce them.

   A whole quacking chorus greeted visitors at the edge of the pond.

   The quacking flock scattered across the lawn the moment the gate opened.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3