See unsinkable rubber duck on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Coined by James Randi, by analogy to the way a rubber duck will pop back up to the surface after being submerged.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "unsinkable rubber ducks",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "unsinkable rubber duck"
},
"expansion": "unsinkable rubber duck (plural unsinkable rubber ducks)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010, Paul Kurtz, Exuberant Skepticism, →ISBN, page 179:",
"text": "Indeed, even if they are thoroughly examined and refuted in one age, they seem to reemerge within the next, and people will continue to believe them in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is what I have called the “unsinkable rubber duck” syndrome.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Lawrence R Samuel, Supernatural America: A Cultural History, →ISBN, page 120:",
"text": "As a self-proclaimed “spokesman for rationality,” The Skeptical Inquirer documented every major gaffe made by Jeane Dixon (“the unsinkable rubber duck of prophecy”) and took special pleasure debunking SRI's Geller experiments.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016, Nate Hendley, The Big Con, →ISBN:",
"text": "John, this is an unsinkable rubber duck. They're all unsinkable rubber ducks. There's no way we're going to get rid of them, because people don't listen.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A belief in a supernatural or paranormal phenomenon that people continue to hold, in spite of it being debunked."
],
"id": "en-unsinkable_rubber_duck-en-noun-N22iJH1a",
"links": [
[
"belief",
"belief"
],
[
"supernatural",
"supernatural"
],
[
"paranormal",
"paranormal"
],
[
"phenomenon",
"phenomenon"
],
[
"debunk",
"debunk"
]
],
"wikipedia": [
"James Randi"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-unsinkable rubber duck.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bf/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bf/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav.ogg"
}
],
"word": "unsinkable rubber duck"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Coined by James Randi, by analogy to the way a rubber duck will pop back up to the surface after being submerged.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "unsinkable rubber ducks",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "unsinkable rubber duck"
},
"expansion": "unsinkable rubber duck (plural unsinkable rubber ducks)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010, Paul Kurtz, Exuberant Skepticism, →ISBN, page 179:",
"text": "Indeed, even if they are thoroughly examined and refuted in one age, they seem to reemerge within the next, and people will continue to believe them in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is what I have called the “unsinkable rubber duck” syndrome.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Lawrence R Samuel, Supernatural America: A Cultural History, →ISBN, page 120:",
"text": "As a self-proclaimed “spokesman for rationality,” The Skeptical Inquirer documented every major gaffe made by Jeane Dixon (“the unsinkable rubber duck of prophecy”) and took special pleasure debunking SRI's Geller experiments.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016, Nate Hendley, The Big Con, →ISBN:",
"text": "John, this is an unsinkable rubber duck. They're all unsinkable rubber ducks. There's no way we're going to get rid of them, because people don't listen.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A belief in a supernatural or paranormal phenomenon that people continue to hold, in spite of it being debunked."
],
"links": [
[
"belief",
"belief"
],
[
"supernatural",
"supernatural"
],
[
"paranormal",
"paranormal"
],
[
"phenomenon",
"phenomenon"
],
[
"debunk",
"debunk"
]
],
"wikipedia": [
"James Randi"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-unsinkable rubber duck.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bf/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bf/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-unsinkable_rubber_duck.wav.ogg"
}
],
"word": "unsinkable rubber duck"
}
Download raw JSONL data for unsinkable rubber duck meaning in All languages combined (2.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.