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FRENCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

canard.

duck (of either sex)

6 characters2 syllables approx.Français language

Meaning & usage

noun/ka.naʁ/
  1. duck (of either sex)

    masculine
  2. drake (male duck)

    masculine
  3. canard, hoax

    masculine
  4. newspaper

    informal · masculine · slang
  5. a man who complies with every desire of his partner in order to avoid conflict

    informal · masculine · slang
  6. a man who tries to attract women by offering them gifts

    informal · masculine · slang
  7. lump of sugar dunked in coffee or brandy

    masculine
  8. off-note

    colloquial · masculine
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle French canard, from Old French canart, quanart (“duck”), from cane (“female duck", also "boat”), perhaps ultimately from the same imitative root as caner (“to cackle, prattle”) (although caner is attested later than canart) or from Old French cane (“boat, ship; waterbird”), from Frankish *kanō (“boat, floating vessel”), from Proto-Germanic *kanô (“boat, vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *gan-, *gandʰ- (“vessel, tub”). Compare Norwegian kane (“swan-shaped vessel”), German Kahn (“boat”), Old Norse kæna (“little boat”), and possibly Old Norse knǫrr (“ship”) (whence also Late Latin canardus (“ship”), from Germanic; and Old English cnearr (“merchant ship”)). Related to French canot (“little boat”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.