/kwæk/
OriginFrom Middle English *quacken, queken (“to croak like a frog; make a noise like a duck, goose, or quail”), from quack, qwacke, quek, queke (“quack”, interjection and noun), also kek, keke, whec-, partly of imitative origin and partly from Middle Dutch quacken (“to croak, quack”), from Old Dutch *kwaken (“to croak, quack”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwakōn, from Proto-Germanic *kwakaną, *kwakōną (“to croak”), of imitative origin. Cognate with Saterland Frisian kwoakje, kwaakje (“to quack”), Middle Low German quaken (“to quack, croak”), German quaken (“to quack, croak”), Danish kvække (“to croak”), Swedish kväka (“to croak, quackle”), Norwegian kvekke (“to croak”), Icelandic kvaka (“to twitter, chirp, quack”).
- The sound made by a duck.
“Did you hear that duck make a quack?”
- To make a noise like a duck.
“The more breadcrumbs I threw on the ground, the more they quacked.”
“Do you hear the ducks quack?”
- intransitiveOf a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
- To practice or commit quackery (fraudulent medicine).
“[…] it is incredible, and scarce to be imagin’d, how the Posts of Houses, and Corners of Streets were plaster’d over with Doctors Bills, and Papers of ignorant Fellows; quacking and tampering in Physi”
- obsoleteTo make vain and loud pretensions.
“Seek out for Plants with Signatures
To Quack of Universal Cures”
- Falsely presented as having medicinal powers.
“Don't get your hopes up; that's quack medicine!”
“In precisely the same way does a quack doctor prescribe his infallible nostrum to every patient, without taking into account differences of constitution, or [...]”
“[R]ecently I examined as many newspapers and magazines as I could lay hands on just to see if I could find in them those old, alluring advertisements, ranging from the quack doctor to the quacker prom”
Formsquacks(plural) · quaake(alternative, obsolete) · quacks(present, singular, third-person) · quacking(participle, present) · quacked(participle, past) · quacked(past) · more quack(comparative) · quacker(comparative) · most quack(superlative) · quackest(superlative)