canard

American  

[kuh-nahrd, ka-nar] / kəˈnɑrd, kaˈnar /

noun

• canards
  plural

1. a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor.

2. Cooking. a duck intended or used for food.

3. Aeronautics.

   1. an airplane that has its horizontal stabilizer and elevators located forward of the wing.

   2. Also called canard wing.  one of two small lifting wings located in front of the main wings.

   3. an early airplane having a pusher engine with the rudder and elevator assembly in front of the wings.

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canard British  

/ kæˈnɑːd, kanar /

noun

1. a false report; rumour or hoax

2. an aircraft in which the tailplane is mounted in front of the wing

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• canards
  plural

Etymology

Origin of canard

First recorded in 1840–45; from French: literally, “duck,” from Old French quanart “drake,” originally “cackler,” equivalent to can(er) “to cackle” (of expressive origin) + -art -art, as in mallart “drake”; see mallard

Explanation

During a political campaign, you will often hear on TV commercials some canard about the opponent. This is a false, deluding statement designed to confuse the voters, as it presents the other candidate in a bad light by spreading an untruth. The Old French word quanart, "duck," morphed into canard, as in "vendre un canard à moitié," which refers to "half-selling" a duck, or cheating someone, and the word came to mean something meant to fool someone deliberately. Poet James Whitcomb Riley said, "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." Not always the case with canard.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

canard canards

They said that distinctive "canard fins", consistent with a PrSM, are visible in the footage.

From BBC ● Apr. 3, 2026

Bill Gates jumps off a bandwagon that existed in the first place only as a complete and utter canard.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

This year, let’s agree to dispel the canard that “summer reading” or “beach books” are something frivolous or less important than the serious literature celebrated in austere outlets like the London Review of Books.

From Seattle Times ● May 14, 2024

That movement swept the United States and Britain in the 1980s and early '90s on account of a cultural myth and canard that child-sacrificing Satanic cults were at work.

From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2023

The Valkyrie monoplane, another British machine, was a "canard" monoplane with propeller behind the pilot and in front of main plane.

From The Aeroplane Speaks Fifth Edition by H. (Horatio) Barber

Let’s examine some of the other common canards about gun violence and gun laws, and start thinking about how to move the needle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 1, 2022

There are many canards about that generation, but the most persistent is that the boomers were central to the social and cultural events of the nineteen-sixties.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 18, 2019

Well me too, I'm guilty of one of the great maybe canards of the modern Thanksgiving age which is this notion that you should brine the bird.

From Salon ● Nov. 17, 2018

In fact, she regards Darwin’s work as “impressive,” and makes no argument for a young Earth, the fixity of species or any of the other usual creationist canards.

From Scientific American ● Apr. 17, 2018

Nothing was too infernal or too wicked for the Fenians, and every hour brought some addition to the monstrous stock of canards.

From The Dock and the Scaffold by Unknown

Related Words

• hoax