quacking

Verb (1)

quack (third-person singular simple present quacks, present participle quacking, simple past and past participle quacked)

1. Of a duck, to make its characteristic vocalisation.
   • The more breadcrumbs I threw on the ground, the more they quacked.
2. To make a sound similar to the quack of a duck.
3. (intransitive) Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.

Verb (2)

quack (third-person singular simple present quacks, present participle quacking, simple past and past participle quacked)

1. To practice or commit quackery (fraudulent medicine).
   • […] it is incredible, and scarce to be imagin’d, how the Posts of Houses, and Corners of Streets were plaster’d over with Doctors Bills, and Papers of ignorant Fellows; quacking and tampering in Physick, and inviting the People to come to them for Remedies;1722, Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, in et al., London: E. Nutt, page 36
2. (obsolete) To make vain and loud pretensions.
   • Seek out for Plants with Signatures
     To Quack of Universal Cures1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, London, Part 3, Canto 1, p. 18

   Synonyms:

   boast

See all 11 meanings of quack