See duck and cover in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "ducks and covers",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "ducking and covering",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "ducked and covered",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "ducked and covered",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "duck<> and cover<>"
},
"expansion": "duck and cover (third-person singular simple present ducks and covers, present participle ducking and covering, simple past and past participle ducked and covered)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English coordinated pairs",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Nuclear warfare",
"orig": "en:Nuclear warfare",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
63,
77
]
],
"ref": "1986, \"Weird Al\" Yankovic, “Christmas at Ground Zero”, in Polka Party!:",
"text": "It's Christmas at ground zero / Just seconds left to go / I'll duck and cover / With my Yuletide lover / Underneath the mistletoe",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
108,
122
]
],
"ref": "2026 September 23, David Wallace-Wells, “The Mistake That May Finally Get the Republican Base to Ditch Trump”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
"text": "The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has marked a profound shift of that dynamic, a lesser power expected to duck and cover quickly finding ways to impose costs on the American home front, as well.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To duck under a surface and cover one's face with one's hands, as a means to protect oneself from flying debris etc."
],
"id": "en-duck_and_cover-en-verb-Slsgzt1m",
"links": [
[
"duck",
"duck"
],
[
"under",
"under"
],
[
"surface",
"surface"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"face",
"face"
],
[
"hand",
"hand"
],
[
"protect",
"protect"
],
[
"flying",
"flying"
],
[
"debris",
"debris"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive) To duck under a surface and cover one's face with one's hands, as a means to protect oneself from flying debris etc."
],
"tags": [
"intransitive"
]
}
],
"word": "duck and cover"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "ducks and covers",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "ducking and covering",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "ducked and covered",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "ducked and covered",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "duck<> and cover<>"
},
"expansion": "duck and cover (third-person singular simple present ducks and covers, present participle ducking and covering, simple past and past participle ducked and covered)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English coordinated pairs",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Nuclear warfare"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
63,
77
]
],
"ref": "1986, \"Weird Al\" Yankovic, “Christmas at Ground Zero”, in Polka Party!:",
"text": "It's Christmas at ground zero / Just seconds left to go / I'll duck and cover / With my Yuletide lover / Underneath the mistletoe",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
108,
122
]
],
"ref": "2026 September 23, David Wallace-Wells, “The Mistake That May Finally Get the Republican Base to Ditch Trump”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
"text": "The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has marked a profound shift of that dynamic, a lesser power expected to duck and cover quickly finding ways to impose costs on the American home front, as well.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To duck under a surface and cover one's face with one's hands, as a means to protect oneself from flying debris etc."
],
"links": [
[
"duck",
"duck"
],
[
"under",
"under"
],
[
"surface",
"surface"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"face",
"face"
],
[
"hand",
"hand"
],
[
"protect",
"protect"
],
[
"flying",
"flying"
],
[
"debris",
"debris"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive) To duck under a surface and cover one's face with one's hands, as a means to protect oneself from flying debris etc."
],
"tags": [
"intransitive"
]
}
],
"word": "duck and cover"
}
Download raw JSONL data for duck and cover meaning in English (2.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-10-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-10-01 using wiktextract (c1bb342 and 6f96ddf). 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.