Cluck vs Quack - What's the difference?
cluck | quack |
The sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.
Any sound similar to this.
A kind of tongue click used to urge on a horse.
To make such a sound.
To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.
* Shakespeare
to suffer withdrawal from heroin.
To make a noise like a duck.
A fraudulent healer or incompetent professional, especially a doctor of medicine; an impostor who claims to have qualifications to practice medicine.
* 1662 : Rump: or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs Relating to Late Times, Vol. II , by ‘the most Eminent Wits’
* 1720 : William Derham, Physico-theology
* 1843 , '', book 2, ch. 8, ''The Electon
A charlatan.
Carlyle
(slang) A doctor.
To practice or commit quackery.
(obsolete) To make vain and loud pretensions; to boast.
* Hudibras
falsely presented as having medicinal powers.
As nouns the difference between cluck and quack
is that cluck is the sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks while quack is the sound made by a duck.As verbs the difference between cluck and quack
is that cluck is to make such a sound while quack is to make a noise like a duck.As an adjective quack is
falsely presented as having medicinal powers.cluck
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (dialectal) * (l)Noun
(en noun)Verb
(en verb)- She, poor hen, fond of no second brood, / Has clucked three to the wars.
See also
* cackle English onomatopoeiasquack
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) *.Verb
(en verb)- The more breadcrumbs I threw on the ground, the more they quacked .
- Do you hear the ducks quack ?
Derived terms
*References
Etymology 2
(wikipedia quack) c 1630, shortening of quacksalver, from (etyl)Noun
(en noun)- That doctor is nothing but a lousy quack !
- Polly (to security guard, referring to Dr. Feingarten): Are you going to let that shyster in there?
- Dr. Feingarten': I could sue you, Polly. A shyster is a disreputable lawyer. I'm a ' quack .
- - From the motion picture
- Tis hard to say, how much these Arse-wormes do urge us, We now need no Quack but these Jacks for to purge us, [...]
- After ?ome Months, the Quack gets privately to Town, [...]
- ‘if we are ourselves valets, there shall ‘exist no hero for us; we shall not know the hero when we see him;’ - we shall take the quack for a hero; and cry, audibly through all ballot-boxes and machinery whatsoever, Thou art he; be thou King over us!
- Quacks political; quacks scientific, academical.
Synonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* (l)Verb
(en verb)- To quack of universal cures.
Adjective
(-)- Don't get your hopes up; that's quack medicine!