Word.ws English Dictionary

out for a duck

out for a duck phrase: having batted no hits for the entire game.

Phrase

out for a duck

  1. Having batted no hits for the entire game.
    • The inevitable happened - I was out for a duck and was furious when I got back to the dressing room.2012, Andrew Flintoff, Ashes to Ashes: One Test After Another
    • The batsman out first ball is out for a duck, no matter how fervently and frequently he replays the awful moment in his mind's eye; a missed catch is a drop, however intricate and extenuating the context; and wickets claimed in the post-match bar do not count, even if the bowler believes them...2013, Robert Winder, The Little Wonder: The Remarkable History of Wisden

Origin of out for a duck

From the use of duck to mean a batsman's score of 0 in cricket.

Questions about out for a duck

What does out for a duck mean?
Out for a duck means having batted no hits for the entire game.
What part of speech is out for a duck?
Out for a duck is a phrase.

Words near out for a duck in the dictionary

  1. out at the heels
  2. out back
  3. out ball
  4. out balls
  5. out cold
  6. out for a duck
  7. out for blood
  8. out for the count
  9. out ground
  10. out grounds
  11. out hike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out for a duck (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: “out for a duck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/out_for_a_duck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.