(v. i.) To drop the head or person suddenly; to bow.
(n.) A pet; a darling.
(n.) A linen (or sometimes cotton) fabric, finer and lighter than canvas, -- used for the lighter sails of vessels, the sacking of beds, and sometimes for men's clothing.
(n.) The light clothes worn by sailors in hot climates.
(v. t.) To thrust or plunge under water or other liquid and suddenly withdraw.
(v. t.) To plunge the head of under water, immediately withdrawing it; as, duck the boy.
(v. t.) To bow; to bob down; to move quickly with a downward motion.
(v. i.) To go under the surface of water and immediately reappear; to dive; to plunge the head in water or other liquid; to dip.
(v. t.) Any bird of the subfamily Anatinae, family Anatidae.
(v. t.) A sudden inclination of the bead or dropping of the person, resembling the motion of a duck in water.
Example Sentences:
(1) The move was confirmed by a Lib Dem aide, who said Tory claims to be green were "already a lame duck and are now dead in the water".
(2) The temperature of the anterior and middle hypothalamus of conscious Pekin ducks was altered with chronically implanted thermodes.
(3) Previous studies in the rat, mouse and duck had suggested that agents present in cigarette smoke might induce a cytochrome P450-mediated detoxication pathway, leading to protection against aflatoxin-induced primary liver cancer.
(4) Prolactin plasma concentrations decreased rapidly at the end of incubation in ducks which successfully hatched young as well as in unsuccessful incubators.
(5) From ducks A. laidlawii, M. anatis and various unclassified strains were isolated, among these M. anatis and unclassified arginine splitting mycoplasma strains proved to be pathogenic.
(6) The early phases of hepadnaviral infection were studied in primary duck hepatocyte cultures.
(7) In intact ducks changes in blood flow were recorded as changes in digital subcutaneous tissue temperature.
(8) But on Sunday night it was hard to duck the euphoria.
(9) In the Commons on Monday , John Whittingdale, the culture secretary who only in February chaired the committee that concluded “No future licence fee negotiations must be conducted in the way of the 2010 settlement”, ducked the invitation to explain how exactly the same thing had just happened again.
(10) He was never an intellectual; at Oxford, he did no work, and was proudest of playing squash and cricket for the university, though against Cambridge at Lord's he failed to take a wicket and made a duck.
(11) Adult mallard ducks fed 0, 2, 20, or 200 ppm of cadmium chloride in the diet were sacrificed at 30-day intervals and tissues were analyzed for cadmium.
(12) Typical herpesviral capsids and virions were seen in negatively-stained preparations of duck embryo fibroblasts.
(13) To study the effect of air sac pressures, a controllable pressure difference was produced between the air sac orifices of fixed duck lungs.
(14) Images of dead ducks in oil sands tailings pond have been plastered on billboards in Denver, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis.
(15) You cannot now duck the fact that we have an electoral system which is completely out of step with the aspirations and hopes of millions of British people," he said.
(16) Three Newcastle disease viruses (NDV) isolated from wild ducks in Japan were evaluated for their biological activities, pathogenicity and immunogenicity against one-day-old chickens.
(17) With these synthetic peptides, radioimmunoassay systems for dog, rat, and duck C-peptides were developed.
(18) On the basis of the antiviral action of sulfated polyanions in human immunodeficiency virus and other viral infections, we studied the effect of dextran sulfate and heparin on duck hepatitis B virus infection.
(19) The (Na+ plus K+)-ATPase activities in salt gland homogenates increased 3- to 4-fold after saline treatment of ducks for 3 weeks.
(20) Compared with intact ducks, neither decerebration nor brain stem transection at the rostral mesencephalic (RM) level had any effect on development of diving bradycardia, or heart rate at the end of two-min dives.
Folly
Definition:
(n.) The state of being foolish; want of good sense; levity, weakness, or derangement of mind.
(n.) A foolish act; an inconsiderate or thoughtless procedure; weak or light-minded conduct; foolery.
(n.) Scandalous crime; sin; specifically, as applied to a woman, wantonness.
(n.) The result of a foolish action or enterprise.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is a folly to think measures to fix eurozone governance will suffice, however needed those may be.
(2) A senior Conservative cabinet minister has issued a warning to leaders "of all political parties" that putting Britain's membership of the European Union at risk would be "complete folly" and that the "irresponsible" debate taking place is damaging the country's influence at the negotiating table.
(3) Whenever I hear about David Blunkett's tests for new immigrants, I think of my mother's initial impressions and don't know whether to laugh or cry: laugh because of the patent folly of his attempts to fix what is fluid and to codify what is contested in British identity; or cry at the racism that has inspired it, the nationalism that informs it, and the historical, political and cultural illiteracy that infects every part of it.
(4) Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really.
(5) Honor & Folly ( honorandfolly.com , one bedroom $165 a night, both bedrooms $215, plus a sofabed for children) is a home away from home with a fully stocked kitchen and a cosy living area decorated with vintage and locally crafted furniture.
(6) His friend Dingle Foot drafted an editorial that David then sharpened up, inserting phrases that summed up his outlook: 'We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and crookedness...It is no longer possible to bomb countries because you fear that your trading interests will be harmed...this new feeling for the sanctity of human life is the best element in the modern world.'
(7) ‘Patriotism’ is a difficult concept to pin, and one man’s patriotism can easily be misjudged as folly or even treachery if we start judging based on a narrow understanding of the term.” Walid, a Muslim veteran of the navy, added that “even though we invaded Iraq based upon bogus information, that doesn’t diminish the sacrifice of Captain Khan and other American service members who lost their lives”.
(8) A few years before Lady Thatcher and Mr Letwin became obsessed with the poll tax, the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about the march of folly in human affairs from the Trojan to the Vietnamese war.
(9) To continue along this path of folly is not compatible with the maintenance of wealth, nor with the health of humans or the biosphere.
(10) At 568,969, the paper’s circulation had recently overtaken that of its old rival, the Sunday Times : it’s not true that it plummeted after Suez as a result of the outrage caused by Astor adding the line: “We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and such crookedness” to Dingle Foot’s leader – but well-heeled middle-class readers who cancelled their subscriptions were replaced by relatively impoverished students and leftwing intellectuals.
(11) Some startlingly grand privately owned buildings have repeatedly appeared on the annual register of the most important listed buildings at risk – virtually all the HHA properties are listed, and many are also scheduled ancient monuments or set in grade I gardens – including garden buildings and follies at Castle Howard in Yorkshire and Frogmore mausoleum, which holds some of the Queen's ancestors, in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
(12) In London, the Times newspaper called Ford’s position denying aid to New York City an “act of monumental folly”.
(13) Giles Swayne London • "Intelligent" Boris Johnson commits the age-old folly of mistaking good fortune, selfishness, narcissism and aggression for intelligence, but unwittingly demonstrates the wrongness of his position.
(14) That police can legally do this, the QCCL argues, illustrates the folly and unfairness of laws intended to safeguard an event at which police, on their own projections, will outnumber protesters three to one.
(15) This sad state of affairs shows the folly of handing over taxpayers’ money to unaccountable groups to run schools.
(16) There are obvious implications for public services, and the clear link between poor public services and demand for healthcare is ignored at our folly.
(17) In a household, it would be economic folly to lay out grand plans without having the money to pay for them.
(18) The cliff-side Mussenden Temple is a folly that was modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Rome and built for the Earl Bishop of Derry (one of Lord Bristol’s eccentric forbears), in 1785.
(19) Follies plays exquisitely on the unreliability of memory and the ephemerality of theatre; it is a stark warning against the distorting dangers of nostalgia.
(20) In giving $850bn to the IMF the G20 are only making the poor suffer more, and forcing them to pay for the folly and greed of bankers and speculators.