quack

Meanings

Noun

• The sound made by a duck.
• A fraudulent healer or incompetent professional; especially, a doctor of medicine who makes false diagnoses or inappropriate treatment; an impostor who claims to have qualifications to practice medicine.
• A charlatan.
• A doctor.

Verb

• To make a noise like a duck.
• Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
• To practice or commit quackery (fraudulent medicine).
• To make vain and loud pretensions.

Adjective

• Falsely presented as having medicinal powers.

Related

Similar words

• medicaster
• quacksalver

Origin

• From Middle English *quacken, queken, from quack, qwacke, quek, queke, also kek, keke, whec-, partly of imitative origin and partly from Middle Dutch quacken, from Old Dutch *kwaken, from Proto-West Germanic *kwakōn, from Proto-Germanic *kwakaną, *kwakōną, of imitative origin. Cognate with Saterland Frisian kwoakje, kwaakje, Middle Low German quaken, German quaken, Danish kvække, Swedish kväka, Norwegian kvekke, Icelandic kvaka.
• , from Middle Dutch kwaksalver (modern Dutch kwakzalver), from quacken. Ultimately related to etymology one, above.