1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. quack

Find the word definition

What is "quack"

Crossword clues for quack

quack
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
quack
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a duck quacks (=makes the sound ducks make)
▪ The ducks on the river started quacking.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ About a dozen mallard ducks were sleeping on the sand or quacking in a subdued manner under the dock.
▪ Clearly, enough investors think that Donald Duck will quack on into the twenty-second century!
▪ He gobbled, be quacked, grunted, swallowed syllables.
▪ One wing's shredded, one's flapping, it's quacking up a storm.
▪ She began a frantic quacking at the moment that Cyril got his two hands around her.
▪ The water is full of thrashing, quacking excitement.
▪ Young kids used to quack at us as we went past.
II.noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Larry paid some quack over a thousand dollars to cure his insomnia.
▪ That quack doesn't know anything about treating heart disease.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But when they open their mouths the same old hacking quacks come out, the same old self-serving screeds.
▪ If she mentioned paranoia, Buzz would insist that Elinor was the victim of a lot of quacks.
▪ There is always some magic remedy that will cure it, or some whizz-kid quack with a patent method.
▪ You may be considered an elitist or a quack.
III.adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a quack remedy for colds
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Many of those quack doctors were busy selling their own, often more dangerous diet cures.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Quack

Quack \Quack\, n.

  1. The cry of the duck, or a sound in imitation of it; a hoarse, quacking noise.
    --Chaucer.

  2. [Cf. Quacksalver.] A boastful pretender to medical skill; an empiric; an ignorant practitioner.

  3. Hence, one who boastfully pretends to skill or knowledge of any kind not possessed; a charlatan.

    Quacks political; quacks scientific, academical.
    --Carlyle.

Quack

Quack \Quack\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Qvacked; p. pr. & vb. n. Quacking.] [Of imitative origin; cf. D. kwaken, G. quacken, quaken, Icel. kvaka to twitter.]

  1. To utter a sound like the cry of a duck.

  2. To make vain and loud pretensions; to boast. `` To quack of universal cures.''
    --Hudibras.

  3. To act the part of a quack, or pretender.

Quack

Quack \Quack\, a. Pertaining to or characterized by, boasting and pretension; used by quacks; pretending to cure diseases; as, a quack medicine; a quack doctor.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
quack

"to make a duck sound," 1610s, earlier quake (1520s), variant of quelke (early 14c.), of echoic origin (compare Middle Dutch quacken, Old Church Slavonic kvakati, Latin coaxare "to croak," Greek koax "the croaking of frogs," Hittite akuwakuwash "frog"). Middle English on the quakke (14c.) meant "hoarse, croaking." Related: Quacked; quacking.

quack

"medical charlatan," 1630s, short for quacksalver (1570s), from obsolete Dutch quacksalver (modern kwakzalver), literally "hawker of salve," from Middle Dutch quacken "to brag, boast," literally "to croak" (see quack (v.)) + salf "salve," salven "to rub with ointment" (see salve (v.)). As an adjective from 1650s. The oldest attested form of the word in this sense in English is as a verb, "to play the quack" (1620s). The Dutch word also is the source of German Quacksalber, Danish kvaksalver, Swedish kvacksalvare.

quack

duck sound, 1839, from quack (v.).

Wiktionary
quack

Etymology 1 n. The sound made by a duck. vb. To make a noise like a duck. Etymology 2

  1. falsely presented as having medicinal powers. n. 1 A fraudulent healer or incompetent professional, especially a doctor of medicine; an impostor who claims to have qualifications to practice medicine. 2 A charlatan. 3 Carlyle 4 (context slang English) A doctor. v

  2. 1 To practice or commit quackery. 2 (context obsolete English) To make vain and loud pretensions; to boast.

Related phrases:
WordNet
quack

adj. medically unqualified; "a quack doctor" [syn: quack(a)]

quack

  1. n. an untrained person who pretends to be a physician and who dispenses medical advice

  2. the harsh sound of a duck

quack

  1. v. utter quacking noises; "The ducks quacked"

  2. act as a medical quack or a charlatan

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Quack (horse)

Quack (1969–1995) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who holds the world record for a three-year-old with the fastest mile and a quarter ever run on dirt.

Quack (album)

Quack is the debut studio album by American–Canadian DJ duo Duck Sauce. It was released on April 15, 2014 by Fool's Gold Records.

Quack

Quack may refer to:

  • A person who practices quackery (the promotion of unproven or fraudulent medical practices)
  • Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack, Dutch economist and historian
  • Quack (comics), an independent-comics series published by Star Reach in the 1970s
  • Quack (horse), an American Thoroughbred racehorse
  • Quack (sound), onomatopoeia for the sound made by ducks
  • Quack (album), an album by the Canadian group Duck Sauce
  • Quack grass, a type of grass
  • Quack.com, a company based in Silicon Valley
  • O. K. Quack, a character in the Scrooge McDuck universe

Usage examples of "quack".

Various worse than useless devices are advertised by quacks, who, as a class, are afraid to undertake surgical treatment for the cure of varicocele.

He begged that I would depend upon him, and not trust myself in the hands of quacks, who would be sure to palm their remedies upon me.

I am not quite fully cured as yet, I have been greatly benefited, and believe, if I had come to you before I was duped and swindled by different quacks and was more dead than alive, I would to-day be a thoroughly well man.

But it would be as dangerous to rely on him to expose all the quacks, humbugs and bunkum in the world as it would be to believe those same charlatans.

This country is flooded with cheap circulars and pamphlets, circulated openly and broadcast, wherein ignorant, pretentious, blatant quacks endeavor to frighten young men who may never have practiced self-abuse, or been guilty of excesses in any way, and yet who experience, now and then at long intervals, nocturnal seminal emissions.

This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three hundred years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds, professing himself capable of forming, out of ten or twelve small diamonds, one large one of the finest water without any loss of weight.

Old World mood, outrageously out of place amid its overcarved frumpery, and looking like cartoon ostriches clad in tutus and scrambling quacking through a rainy-day funeral.

I kept silent, looking very modest, but hardly able to control my mirth, whilst the doctor was staring at me with a mixture of astonishment and of spite, evidently thinking me some bold quack who had tried to supplant him.

An impulse worthy of a great soul made him bestow a large reward upon the physician, a man of intelligence, who pronounced his sentence of death, but a completely opposite weakness had prompted him, a few months before, to load with benefits the doctors and the quack who made him believe that they had cured him.

I took leave of everybody, especially of Count Wagensberg, who had a serious attack of that malady which yields so easily to mercury when it is administered by a skilled hand, but which kills the unfortunate who falls amongst quacks.

Then they come out in couples and waddle under the wrong fence into the lower meadow, fly madly under the tool-house, pitch blindly in with the sitting hens, and out again in short order, all the time quacking and squawking, honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra.

Like every other drugstore on earth, it is filled with quack products that remind me of nineteenth-century ads for hair restorers and innervating elixirs.

You had all sorts of other voodoo theories back then--one of your fellow quacks told Mumsy and Evil that I was screwed up sexually.

When the overseer went to check, the quacker was in a crouching position and refused to respond to vocal commands.

A duck maybe, Aly silently countered, pleased yet perturbed that the quacker continued to talk as if nothing had happened.