[Ads-l] The Duck Test

Thu Feb 22 02:12:50 UTC 2024

Excellent example, Bonnie. Your citation is a meta riddle and not a
conventional riddle. Perhaps it did influence the emergence of the
duck test. Both of our citations are meta riddles that comment on the
riddle format and use the key phrase "quacks like a duck".

Laurence Horn wrote:
> Later jokes of this kind would morph into punchlines
> of the form “A dog. I lied about the quacking."

Interesting. There is a family of jokes. Here is a citation from a
London newspaper in 1907. The animal is a cat instead of a dog, but
the meta riddle fits the same template:

Date: August 28, 1907
Newspaper: The Daily Mirror
Newspaper Location: London, England
Article: A Sin Against Love - Chapter 1
Author: Maie Queen
Quote Page 12, Column 1
Database: Newspapers.com
https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-mirror-quacks-like-a-duck/141805952/

[Begin excerpt]
"When I was a boy I had a grandfather--don't be startled, many people
have. He used to ask me a riddle--what animal has soft fur, a long
tail, green eyes, and quacks like a duck? When I had rummaged through
my natural history, and could not answer him, he would say, 'Why, a
cat, of course,' and when I protested with tears that a cat never, or
hardly ever, quacked, he would calmly say, 'Oh! I put that in to make
it more difficult.'

He thought it funny. Since then I have found that in life's real
riddles Allah puts in lots of things to make them more difficult. As a
contented philosopher, I never guess."
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Wed, Feb 21, 2024 at 8:14 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Later jokes of this kind would morph into punchlines of the form “A dog. I lied about the quacking."
>
> > On Feb 21, 2024, at 5:55 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Interesting match, Stephen.
> > Below is the most entertaining match I found while searching for
> > "quacks like a duck". This citation is definitely not an example of
> > the duck test, but it does nicely illustrate the logic of a child.
> >
> > Date: April 9, 1919
> > Periodical: The Aeroplane
> > Page Title: The World of Aeronautics
> > Article: The Bolo Riddle
> > Publisher: General Publishing Company, London
> > Quote Page 1434
> > https://archive.org/details/aeroplane161919lond/page/1434/mode/1up?q=quacks
> >
> > [Begin excerpt]
> > . . . one is reminded of the child who asked the riddle: "What animal
> > is it that has fur, four legs, and that quacks like a duck?" As no one
> > could guess, the youthful interrogator gleefully said the answer was
> > "a dog," and, when it was objected that a dog rarely quacked,
> > remarked, with maddening placidity, that the quack had been put in to
> > make the riddle more difficult.
> > [End excerpt]
> >
> > Garson
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 21, 2024 at 5:19 PM Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Maybe, or maybe not, a good example of the duck test.
> >> Maybe, or maybe not, a cousin of "tastes like chicken."
> >>
> >> Weat Virginia Wild Life,  XI 5-6. May-June, 1933, page 7/2:
> >>
> >> The frog more nearly resembles a duck, he swims and dives like a duck, his feet are webbed like ducks, he lives along the water like a duck,  he quacks like a duck, and when eaten tastes like a duck, (maybe).
> >>
> >> https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015084405995&seq=475
> >>
> >> sg
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Baker, John <000014a9c79c3f97-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2024 9:01 PM
> >> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Subject: The Duck Test
> >>
> >> There is a famous functional test, frequently used in legal reasoning and political rhetoric, for determining how something should be treated.  One formulation is "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."  This version is attributed to James Whitcomb Riley (1849 - 1916), the "Hoosier poet," who was once enormously popular and is still read today, although I cannot seem to find it in his works (which, however, I have not searched in full).
> >>
> >> Wikipedia suggests a different, later origin, https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test__;!!OToaGQ!suZLx32tMZwkPy_OWlUOgIBfusOc98E_RSOcZbwUDZA1Ww-4J3IPGRZq0UMceLTmcCTLZ5Y-wQTxJ6KcCFgT9c5a4gcBVF-Frdc$ .  Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers, at a labor meeting in 1946 accused a person of being a communist:  "I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks-I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck."  Can this be antedated?
> >>
> >> I might mention in passing that, as a guide to ornithology, the duck test is quintessentially unreliable.  As a practical approach to considering legal consequences, however, this functional test is well-regarded.
> >>
> >>
> >> John Baker
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >>
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> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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