rubber duck

English

Several modern rubber ducks.

Etymology 1

Alternative forms

• rubber duckie
• rubber ducky

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

rubber duck (plural rubber ducks)

1. A toy, made from rubber or rubber-like plastic, shaped like a duck; usually a floating bathtub toy.
2. (nautical, slang) An inflatable boat.

Derived terms

• rubber ducking
• rubber duck debugging
• unsinkable rubber duck

Translations

toy shaped like a duck

• Catalan: ànec de goma m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 橡皮小鴨／橡皮小鸭 (xiàngpí xiǎoyā)

• Czech: gumová kachnička
• Finnish: kylpyankka, kumiankka (fi)
• French: canard en caoutchouc m, canard en plastique
• German: Gummiente (de) f, Quietscheente (de) f, Quietscheentchen n, Badeente f
• Hungarian: gumikacsa
• Italian: paperella di gomma f, papera di gomma f
• Korean: 고무오리 (gomuori)
• Norwegian: badeand (no) m or f
• Polish: (gumowa) kaczuszka f
• Portuguese: patinho de borracha m
• Spanish: pato de goma m
• Swedish: badanka (sv) c
• Turkish: plastik ördek, banyo ördeği

inflatable boat

• Finnish: kumivene (fi)
• Korean: 고무보트 (gomuboteu)

References

• Inflatable boat on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

Alternative forms

• rubber-duck

Verb

rubber duck (third-person singular simple present rubber ducks, present participle rubber ducking, simple past and past participle rubber ducked)

1. (transitive, programming) To act as a sounding board for a programmer that is debugging their code, facilitating rubber duck debugging.

Related terms

• ducking