Ollie and Quentin by Piers Baker for September 07, 2013

Ouch!

I’m glad he didn’t have a gun.

I thought that stump was his missing head!!

Robin 1, Ollie and Quentin 0

“Honey, I forgot to duck.”

Sadly, Ollie is a gull, not a duck.

@pcolli:duck (n.1) waterfowl, Old English duce (found only in genitive ducan) “a duck,” literally “a ducker,” presumed to be from Old English *ducan “to duck, dive” (see duck (v.)). Replaced Old English ened as the name for the bird, this being from PIE *aneti-, the root of the “duck” noun in most Indo-European languages.

duck (v.) “to plunge into” (transitive), c.1300; to suddenly go under water (intransitive), mid-14c., from presumed Old English *ducan “to duck,” found only in derivative duce (n.) “duck” (but there are cognate words in other Germanic languages, e.g. Old High German tuhhan “to dip,” German tauchen “to dive,” Old Frisian duka, Middle Dutch duken “to dip, dive,” Dutch duiken), from Proto-Germanic *dukjan.

Sense of “bend, stoop quickly” is first recorded in English 1520s. Related: Ducked; ducking. The noun is attested from 1550s in the sense of “quick stoop;” meaning “a plunge, dip” is from 1843.