canvasback
Americannoun
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canvasbacks,
plural
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canvasback
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of canvasback
An Americanism dating back to 1595–1605; after the canvaslike color of its back
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Vocabulary lists containing canvasback
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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On the banks of Yosemite Creek, brown-headed canvasback ducks plunged and preened.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 1, 2021
For dinner a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad had presented a canvasback duck.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Mallards, pintails and wigeon make up the bulk of the puddlers, while available divers include bluebills, redheads, buffleheads and an occasional canvasback.
From Time Magazine Archive
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In this way, evening by evening, I drew them nearer till at length in the dusk one evening a young canvasback snatched a piece of bread from my fingers.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Bingham bowed over his glass, and regretted that canvasback ducks and terrapin were not yet in season.
From The Red City A Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington by S. Weir (Silas Weir) Mitchell
Also spotted, but in fewer numbers, were snow geese, buffleheads, redheads, goldeneyes, American widgeon, ruddy, ring-necked, canvasbacks, scaup and wood ducks.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 15, 2015
I continued my coaxing and in a few days three of the four young canvasbacks would come to me for food.
From Time Magazine Archive
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The heavy-resin cast mallards and canvasbacks appear to have made a bad landing at your doorstep.
From Time Magazine Archive
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The blue and green-winged teal had already begun to fly; canvasbacks, mallards, widgeons, pintails, shovelers and redheads would follow soon, before and with the frost.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Flying goldeneyes make a whistling sound; wood ducks move with a swish; canvasbacks make a steady rushing sound.
From Ducks at a Distance A Waterfowl Identification Guide by Robert W. Hines
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.