Word.ws English Dictionary

duck and dive

duck and dive verb: to operate in a skilfully shifty or evasive manner.

Verb

duck and dive (third-person singular simple present ducks and dives, present participle ducking and diving, simple past ducked and dived or (chiefly US) ducked and dove, past participle ducked and dived)

  1. (UK, colloquial) To operate in a skilfully shifty or evasive manner.
    • So what next? For now, at least, the prevailing wisdom in Europe is that people need something to divert them from the ongoing nightmares elsewhere. […] Best, some insist, to keep the show on the road and then duck and dive in the event of further Covid-19 issues.2021 January 12, Robert Kitson, “Is it morally right for rugby to host the Six Nations in a pandemic?”, in The Guardian

Forms of duck and dive

third-person singular presentducks and dives
present participleducking and diving
pastducked and dived
past USducked and dove
past participleducked and dived

Questions about duck and dive

What does duck and dive mean?
Duck and dive means to operate in a skilfully shifty or evasive manner.
What part of speech is duck and dive?
Duck and dive is a verb.
What is the past tense of duck and dive?
The past tense of duck and dive is ducked and dived.

Words near duck and dive in the dictionary

  1. duci
  2. DUCivR
  3. duck
  4. duck ague
  5. duck and cover
  6. duck and dive
  7. duck ant
  8. duck ants
  9. duck architecture
  10. duck arsed
  11. duck building

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: duck and dive (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.

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Cite this entry: “duck and dive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/duck_and_dive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.