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duckspeak

noun

Etymology

From duck + speak, coined by George Orwell in 1949 as part of the Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

  1. inherited from *bʰeh₂g-✻ — “to distribute”
  2. inherited from *spekan✻
  3. derived from *spreg-✻ — “to make a sound, utter, speak”
  4. inherited from *sprekaną✻ — “to speak, make a sound”
  5. inherited from *sprekan✻
  6. inherited from specan — “to speak”
  7. inherited from speke
  8. compounded as duckspeak — “duck + speak”

Definitions

  1. Thoughtless or formulaic speech.

    • Because his utterances detour through his brain - rather than, as in duckspeak, coming straight from the well-programmed larynx - he has Socratic doubts...
    • I think you might just have had the courage to realize things I didn't know were there. That's really duckspeak, isn't it. I only thought I was happy.
    • They have developed a particularly obnoxious form of ungood duckspeak. 'Friendly fire' and 'collateral damage' are only the most obvious examples...

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for duckspeak. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA