[Fr.; lit. ‘duck’; also used in sense given below.
Littré says Canard for a silly story comes from the old expression ‘vendre un canard à moitié’ (to half-sell a duck), in which à moitié was subsequently suppressed. It is clear that to half-sell a duck is not to sell it at all; hence the sense ‘to take in, make a fool of.’ In proof of this he cites bailleur de canards, deliverer of ducks, utterer of canards, of date 1612: Cotgr., 1611, has the fuller vendeur de canards a moitié ‘a cousener, guller, cogger; foister, lyer.’ Others have referred the word to an absurd fabricated story purporting to illustrate the voracity of ducks, said to have gone the round of the newspapers, and to have been credited by many. As this account has been widely circulated, it is possible that it has contributed to render the word more familiar, and thus more used, in English.]
An extravagant or absurd story circulated to impose on people’s credulity; a hoax, a false report.
[I saw the word in print before 1850 (ED).]
1864. in Webster.
1866. Even. Standard, 13 July, 6. A silly canard circulated by the Owl, about England having joined France and Russia in ‘offering’ their mediation to the belligerents.
1880. W. Day, Racehorse in Train., xix. 185. The canards so industriously circulated as to the real cause of the deadly opposition he had met with.
