unsinkable rubber duck

noun

Etymology

Coined by James Randi, by analogy to the way a rubber duck will pop back up to the surface after being submerged.

Definitions

  1. A belief in a supernatural or paranormal phenomenon that people continue to hold, in…

    A belief in a supernatural or paranormal phenomenon that people continue to hold, in spite of it being debunked.

    • As a self-proclaimed “spokesman for rationality,” The Skeptical Inquirer documented every major gaffe made by Jeane Dixon (“the unsinkable rubber duck of prophecy”) and took special pleasure debunking SRI's Geller experiments.
    • John, this is an unsinkable rubber duck. They're all unsinkable rubber ducks. There's no way we're going to get rid of them, because people don't listen.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for unsinkable rubber duck. 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