canard
UK/kəˈnɑːd//kəˈnɑɹd/
canard noun: a false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.
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Noun
canard (plural canards)
- A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.
- It’s a cinch, now that Spurling has cleared away a century’s worth of misapprehensions and canards.2005 August 29, The New Yorker, page 78
- There is a notion gaining credence that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live together happily inside a John Lennon song (Imagine there's no country...). This...2006, Arundhati Roy, Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire, page 40
- Synonyms:
- hoax
- A type of aircraft in which the primary horizontal control and stabilization surfaces are in front of the main wing.
- A horizontal control and stabilization surface located in front of the main wing of an aircraft.
- Synonyms:
- foreplane
- Any small winglike structure on a vehicle, usually used for stabilization.
canard meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada
canard in Tamil
- புரளி, வாத்து
canard in Urdu
- جھوٹی خبر
canard in Bengali
- মিথ্যা সংবাদ, গুজব
canard in Kannada
- ಸುಳ್ಳುಕತೆ, ಪುಕಾರು, ಸುಳ್ಳುಸುದ್ದಿ, ಆರೋಪಣೆ, ಕಪಟ ವಾರ್ತೆ
More languagesFewer languages
- canard in Malay
- kanard
- canard in Indonesian
- kanard
- canard in Vietnamese
- tin vịt
Synonyms of canard
Forms of canard
| plural | canards |
|---|
Origin of canard
Borrowed from French canard (“duck, hoax”). etymology note The primary English meaning of canard comes from the Medieval French expression “vendre un canard à moitié”, which literally means “to sell half a duck” or “to half-sell a duck”. This was perhaps the punch line to a joke. Eventually the punch line came to stand for the joke and then finally the word alone stood for the whole concept. The story may perhaps have gone like this: A duck seller is successful and content as the only duck seller on a street, selling his ducks for eight francs each. A new duck seller moves in across the street who steals all the business by offering his ducks for seven francs each. Then a price war ensues, back and forth, until the new duck seller is down to three francs for a duck. The original duck seller is beside himself with worry and frustration, but finally he puts up a big sign that says, “Two francs” and then in small print at the bottom “for half a duck.” In this way, to half-sell ducks may have come to mean tricking people with something that is literally true but misleading. It has this same metaphorical meaning in French. Now in English, it simply means anything that is deliberately...
Words formed from canard
Words that rhyme with canard
Questions about canard
- What does canard mean?
- Canard means a false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.
- What is canard in Tamil?
- Canard in Tamil is புரளி, வாத்து. See Canard meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is canard?
- Canard is a noun.
- How do you pronounce canard?
- Canard is pronounced /kəˈnɑɹd/ (US).
- What is the plural of canard?
- The plural of canard is canards.
Words near canard in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: canard (page history and authors); canard (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); canard (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); canard (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); canard (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-canard.ogg.
Cite this entry: “canard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/canard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.