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quack

Pronunciation: /kwæk/

The English word “quack” has 11 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The vocalisation made by a duck.
  2. A fraudulent healer, especially a bombastic peddler in worthless treatments, a doctor who makes false diagnoses for monetary benefit, or an untrained or poorly trained doctor who uses fraudulent credentials to attract patients
  3. Any similar charlatan or incompetent professional.
  4. Any doctor.

verb

  1. Of a duck, to make its characteristic vocalisation.
  2. To make a sound similar to the quack of a duck.
  3. Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
  4. To practice or commit quackery (fraudulent medicine).
  5. To make vain and loud pretensions.

interjection

  1. A duck's quack.

adjective

  1. Falsely presented as having medicinal powers.

Etymology

From 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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.