English

Noun

dead duck ‎(plural dead ducks)

1. (idiomatic) One who is in serious danger or trouble; shark bait.

   She's a dead duck if she starts flirting with my boyfriend!‎

2. (idiomatic) A project that is doomed to failure from the start.

   The government decision meant that the proposed boycott of South African goods was a dead duck.‎

   • 2012 May 9, John Percy, “Birmingham City 2 Blackpool 2 (2–3 on agg): match report”, in The Daily Telegraph, London, archived from the original on 8 April 2016:

     They may have finished 11 points behind West Ham and lost both league games, conceding eight goals, but the Tangerine dream remains alive. Holloway said: “We won’t get a bigger test than West Ham but we’ve got one chance. If you’d asked me last summer when I lost all those players I’d have said this was a dead duck, but we don’t lie down at this club.”

Synonyms

• shark bait

Translations

References

• dead duck at OneLook Dictionary Search