Word.ws English Dictionary

ducking and diving

ducking and diving is the present participle and gerund of duck and dive.

Meaning of duck and dive

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

Questions about ducking and diving

What is ducking and diving the present participle and gerund of?
Ducking and diving is the present participle and gerund of duck and dive.

Words near ducking and diving in the dictionary

  1. duckiest
  2. duckin'
  3. duckiness
  4. ducking
  5. ducking and covering
  6. ducking and diving
  7. ducking coat
  8. ducking coats
  9. ducking down
  10. ducking off
  11. ducking out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ducking and diving (page history and authors); 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: “ducking and diving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ducking_and_diving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.