Word.ws English Dictionary

rubber duck

rubber duck noun: a toy, made from rubber or rubber-like plastic, shaped like a duck; usually a floating bathtub toy.

rubber duck: a toy, made from rubber or rubber-like plastic, shaped like a duck; usually a floating bathtub toy
Image: gaetanlee, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

rubber duck (plural rubber ducks)

  1. A toy, made from rubber or rubber-like plastic, shaped like a duck; usually a floating bathtub toy.
  2. (slang) An inflatable boat.
    • Around midday on Saturday, Warrnambool's main beach was evacuated when a volunteer from Warrnambool Surf Life Saving Club was thrown into the ocean from an inflatable rescue boat (IRB), often referred to as a rubber duck.2023 October 2, Emily Bissland, “Warrnambool beach evacuated as surf lifesaver is 'catapulted' from rogue inflatable rescue boat”, in Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Verb

rubber duck (third-person singular simple present rubber ducks, present participle rubber ducking, simple past and past participle rubber ducked)

  1. (transitive) To act as a sounding board for a programmer that is debugging their code, facilitating rubber duck debugging.

Synonyms of rubber duck

Forms of rubber duck

Noun
pluralrubber ducks
Verb
third-person singular presentrubber ducks
present participlerubber ducking
past participlerubber ducked
pastrubber ducked

Origin of rubber duck

From rubber + duck. The verb sense is derived from the noun one; see rubber duck debugging for more information on its etymology.

Words formed from rubber duck

Questions about rubber duck

What does rubber duck mean?
Rubber duck means a toy, made from rubber or rubber-like plastic, shaped like a duck; usually a floating bathtub toy.
What part of speech is rubber duck?
Rubber duck can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of rubber duck?
The plural of rubber duck is rubber ducks.

Words near rubber duck in the dictionary

  1. rubber cheques
  2. rubber chicken
  3. rubber chickens
  4. rubber diaper
  5. rubber diapers
  6. rubber duck
  7. rubber duck debugging
  8. rubber ducked
  9. rubber duckie
  10. rubber duckies
  11. rubber ducking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubber 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-rubber duck.ogg.

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