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The word duck meaning the bird, came from the verb "to duck" meaning to bend down as if to get under something, because of the way it feeds; compare the Dutch word duiken = "to dive". This happened because the older Old English word for "duck" came to be pronounced the same as the word for "end": other Germanic languages still have similar words for "duck" and "end": for example, Dutch eend = "duck", eind = "end". |
