animals and non-animals

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/12/2011 09:37 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I am not up on etymology of "duck" verb, but if it's connected to the
> > bird, the meaning split a millennium ago.
>
>If you ever observe the relevant avian in the wild, the possibility
>either that ducks are called "ducks" because they duck or that _duck_
>means "duck" because it's reminiscent of an action typical of ducks
>will immediately come to mind. It's quite unavoidable.

Even by the OED -- duck (n1) = 'swimming bird',
"Etymology:  Old English duce (? dúce), < u- (or
-) grade of *dúcan to
<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58182#eid6079438>duck
v., dive; compare Danish duk-and lit. dive-duck
(and = duck), Swedish dyk-fågel lit. dive-fowl,
diver; and the synonyms under
<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58186#eid6080534>ducker
<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58186#eid6080534>n."

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org