"ducks on the pond" meaning in English

See ducks on the pond in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: EN-AU ck1 ducks on the pond.ogg
Etymology: * (coded warning): Originally used in shearing sheds; later extended to other normally all-male environments, such as some pubs. Etymology templates: {{sense|coded warning}} (coded warning): Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} ducks on the pond pl (plural only)
  1. (Australia) A coded warning used by men to alert each other that female guests ("ducks") are present ("on the pond"), so that for politeness they should moderate their language. Tags: Australia, plural, plural-only Synonyms (coded warning): ducks have landed, feathers flying, they're on the pond
    Sense id: en-ducks_on_the_pond-en-noun-A8Ygzac2 Categories (other): Australian English, English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 37 35 Disambiguation of English pluralia tantum: 37 28 34 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 29 35 37 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 32 31 37 Disambiguation of 'coded warning': 92 4 4
  2. (baseball) Members of a batting order who are on base; baserunners. Tags: plural, plural-only Categories (topical): Baseball
    Sense id: en-ducks_on_the_pond-en-noun-80iglVbC Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 37 35 Disambiguation of English pluralia tantum: 37 28 34 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 29 35 37 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 32 31 37 Topics: ball-games, baseball, games, hobbies, lifestyle, sports
  3. (Car Sales) There are customers arriving on the car lot. Tags: plural, plural-only
    Sense id: en-ducks_on_the_pond-en-noun-rfQNNtOQ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 37 35 Disambiguation of English pluralia tantum: 37 28 34 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 29 35 37 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 32 31 37
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          "text": "There are two ducks on the pond for the cleanup hitter.",
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        "Members of a batting order who are on base; baserunners."
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      "id": "en-ducks_on_the_pond-en-noun-80iglVbC",
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        "(Car Sales) There are customers arriving on the car lot."
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      "sense": "coded warning",
      "word": "feathers flying"
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    {
      "sense": "coded warning",
      "word": "they're on the pond"
    }
  ],
  "word": "ducks on the pond"
}

Download raw JSONL data for ducks on the pond meaning in English (2.8kB)

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  "msg": "Form tags without form: desc='plural plural-only', tagsets=[('plural', 'plural-only')]",
  "path": [
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  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "noun",
  "title": "ducks on the pond",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (74c5344 and fb63907). 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.