It’s a British phrase for something that has no hope. In the last election, the Labour Party were a dead duck. The company I used to work for was so badly managed in the end that it didn’t matter that we were making money; they’d run up such a huge debt that we couldn’t pay back ever and so we were a dead duck, too.

It’s anything that hasn’t got a hope of succeeding. In another thirty years electric cars will most likely be a dead duck. Again. And solar panels.

Current dead ducks in the UK include Remainer hopes of going back in the EU. Most of them have realised it but there’s a few still trying to make it quack. Another one is the idea that the Earth is flat. It’s a ball, you loonies. Give it up.

I blame the EU. Ursula von dead Laysan.

Whip out your camera. Now watch carefully (I hope you don’t get seasick!):

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G.

It actually comes, like many sayings, from hunting terminology. When lying in a punt, on a lake, with a massive punt gun (which would fire a lot of shot), you had to be extremely patient to wait until you had “lined up your ducks” by having as many as possible in line with your cone of spread of duck shot, before pulling the trigger in order to make the hunt worthwhile by bagging as many ducks a possible.

Not only can bread be fattening to ducks and make it harder for them to fly and otherwise evade predators, but feeding ducks can also lead to other serious problems that can make them sick.

The others have correctly stated that the expression comes from a tale in The Thousand and One Nights. Also, as they have explained, the expression means that once you have released whatever bad thing it is, that thing is going to do whatever it is going to do — you can’t stop it anymore; i.e. you have set into motion something irreversible.

But the original tale actually has a point which is the exact opposite of the modern expression’s. You see, a poor fisherman had found this bottle on the beach, and when he removed the stopper, a gigantic genie came out and swore to kill the fisherman. So the fisherman, thinking fast, begged a boon of the genie, namely that the genie would explain to him this one small thing — how on Earth had it fit into that tiny bottle? The genie said that it was really quite simple, but the fisherman insisted that he just couldn’t believe that it could be so. So, to convince the fisherman, the genie transformed itself into smoke and went back into the bottle. Thereupon the fisherman inserted the stopper again.

That is to say, in the original story the moral is that if you’re sufficiently quick-witted, you actually can put the genie right back into the bottle.

The story was much-loved across cultures and travelled a great deal. It reappears, e.g., in the collection of fairy-tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm under the title Der Flaschengeist, “The Ghost in the Bottle”.

Emil Mazey (1913-1983), the secretary-treasurer of the United Automobile Workers for 33 years, said at a labor meeting in 1946:

“I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assume that he IS a duck.”

Walter Reuther (1907-1970), the UAW president from 1946-1970, used the “like a duck” saying, as did labor leader James B. Carey (1911-1971). “Like a duck” has extended beyond its Communist-finding origins to become a part of general legal reasoning.

Wikipedia cites a similar phrase from Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley, but no such phrase exists in any of his work.

Wikipedia: Duck test
The duck test is a humorous term for a form of inductive reasoning. This is its usual expression:

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.

History
Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) may have coined the phrase when he wrote “when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

Walter P. Reuther Library
UAW Secretary Treasurer’s Office: Emil Mazey Records
Posted December 4th, 2008 by drice
Date:
1942-1955, bulk 1947-1952
A long-time member of the Socialist Party, Emil Mazey began his union career with the United Auto Workers at the Briggs Manufacturing Co. He would play leading roles in wage negotiations, organizing locals, and gaining equality for African-American workers. He served as secretary-treasurer of the UAW for over 30 years in addition to stints on the executive boards of both the UAW and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and directorships of several UAW departments. His records reflect primarily his long tenure as secretary-treasurer and include appeal board cases, regional and local files, and officer, department, and council files.

Google News Archive
29 September 1946, Milwaukee (WI) Sentinel, pg. 1, col. 1:
Communist Expose
The Case of the Duck
By JOHN SENTINEL
WHAT is the Sentinel trying to do—promote a witch-hunting expedition?

Not at all. The Sentinel is encouraging a duck hunting expedition, and thereby hangs a tale.

Emil Mazey, a Detroit labor leader, recently rose at a labor meeting to object to a proposed resolution as Communist. The man who introduced the resolution challenged Mazey to prove he was a Communist. Mazey retorted:

“I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assumer that he IS a duck.”

Since that classic pronouncement, the duck is reported to have become a symbol in Detroit labor circles, and “Quack! Quack!” the literal rallying cry of the anti-Communist forces there whenever something that smells Communistic raises its head in union meeeting halls.

Newspapers.com
30 September 1946, Sheboygan (WI) Press, “Mary Brendzej Denies She Is Communist In Interview,” pg. 8, cols. 1-2:
Meanwhile, John O. McGlashan, Baraboo, special UIU organizer, declared: “we’re standing on the statements that we made Saturday to The Press:

“When I see a bird that quacks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks, I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”

Newspapers.com
12 October 1946, The Financial Post (Toronto, ON), “How to Recognize a Red” by Ronald Williams, pg. 15, col. 1:
“How do you know I’m a Communist?” the mover of the resolution asked.

“Now, fellas,” said Emil (Mazey—ed.), turning to the meeting. “When you see a bird that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck and hangs around other ducks, you say, ‘There is a duck!’”

Google Books
Newspapers.com [Nashville (TN) Banner, March 18, 1947, pg. 4, col. 1.]
Plain Talk
Volume 1
1946
Pg. 45:
Proof Positive
Emil Mazey, the Detroit labor leader, when challenged to prove that a certain individual in his union was a Communist said: “I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks, I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”

Google Books
Traitors in the Pulpit and Treason Toward God
By Kenneth Goff
Englewood, CO: Kenneth Goff
1946
Pg. 53:
Mazey retorted: “I can’t prove you are a Communist, but when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet, and associates with ducks — I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”

Google Books
Labor Relations Program : hearings before the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress, first session, on S. 55 and S.J. Res. 22, and all other bills and resolutions referred to the committee having the object of reducing industrial strife in the United States. January 23,28,29,30,31, February 4,5,6, and 7, 1947.
By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
1947
Pg. 1684:
These are strong indicators—and, when all these indicators point the same way, we are inclined to adopt the statement of a prominent labor leader when in angry debate he was asked to prove a man a Communist:

“I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks — I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”

Newspapers.com
12 March 1947, Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI), “Nailing the Liars” (editorial), pg. 6, col. 1:
Another witness before the house labor committee probably pointed a better way just last week. The record reveals his testimony like this:

“The head of a union local once accused a member of being a Communist and the latter challenged him to prove it. That union head replied, ‘When I see a bird that looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck—I know h is a duck. You’re a Communist.’ And that member he had labeled a Communist sat down.”

Newspapers.com
27 March 1947, Moline (IL) Dispatch, ‘Treason Can Be Outlawed” (editorial), pg. 6, col. 1:
You can’t swear that any certain man on the federal payroll is a Communist. But, as one witness at Washington stated, when you see a fowl that walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know it is a duck even if it doesn’t admit it.

3 September 1948, New York (NY) Times, pg. 1:
“A door-opener for the Communist party is worse than a member of the Communist party. When someone walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he’s a duck.”
(James B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organizations—ed.)

Time magazine
National Affairs: He’s a Duck
Monday, Sept. 13, 1948
(...)
James B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the C.I.O. and onetime U.E. president, was much better informed. Carey had been ousted from the U.E. presidency by the men behind Fitzgerald—Secretary-Treasurer Julius Emspak and Organizing Director James Matles. He named them, along with Fitzgerald and the whole U.E. executive board, as men who “sacrifice the interests of the U.E. to promote the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.”

Did Carey think that the U.E. was a front for the Communist Party? “On many questions, yes sir,” he answered.

Did he believe that any of the U.E. bosses he named were members of the C.P.?

“I don’t think that makes any difference,” said Carey. “When someone walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he’s a duck.”

The origin of the phrase is indeed One Thousand and One Nights. The word “genie” is itself Anglicised from the Arabic “djinn.” But in America, the saying became popular during the Cold War.

Then, the “genie” referred to nuclear warfare. There was the fear that if one side used a nuclear warhead in anger, the other side would retaliate in kind, and it would escalate until both of us had destroyed the other, and the rest of the world.

That’s what the phrase meant to me growing up: if “the genie was out of the bottle” it would have meant World War III. More often we heard of keeping the [nuclear] genie in the bottle.

When read in the full original version (see below) it means that there comes a point where evidence is so abundant that there can be no question or doubt as to its veracity. Which reminds me of the great example of this I love to share.

Seems there was a murder and the prosecuting attorney had the doctor who examined the victim, in the witness box and was grilling him over and over about the certainty of the victims death.

I don’t know what his point was in pushing so hard with this one question: “How can you be so sure he was dead Doctor?” The doctor, in exasperation, finally said, “Because I have his brain in a jar on my desk!”

This is for Michael Bennett.

Sorry Mike, but you still missed the correct quote, so please pay attention so no other like me will correct you.

It should be this way: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck.”

The middle portion as an alternate may use “swims like a duck”… the reason I’m being picky here is because there are many many birds that swim like a duck, but none that walk like one…except another duck!

Yes…that includes geese for their walk is much more deliberate and intentional. Bottom line giveaway though will always be the “quack”.

By the way! This brings to my mind the old notion that I hear, which claims a duck’s “quack” will not echo. Have you any knowledge of the truth or nonsense on that?

That’s the thing with sayings isn’t it? They are so obscure and indecipherable. It would be so much more clear to say something like, “That male subject possessing the XY chromosome having now been transported from elsewhere to here is much like an aquatic vertebrate separated, though unexpectedly, out of his high salinity liquid environment to a new and unfamiliar location to which he is unaccustomed and unlikely to succeed.”

See, simple. But when people say such utterly nutball nonsense as “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” or “a fool and is money are soon parted” or even “he who hesitates is lost” are just impossible to understand. Just like that fish thing. I mean just because a fish lives in water and would not know how to live properly or even survive out of water, how am I supposed to put that all together?

Craziness. Also, it’s impossible to type that into a search bar to figure out what it means. It’s almost like you were just wanting to add to your now 6 question total which includes “to carry coals to Newcastle” which is indeed confusing. But easy to look up.

But fish out of water? That’s like not knowing what good morning means.

This expression is usually used not as a simile, but as a metaphor, and that is the reason why you and your editor have been able to use it in an unusual way - to, I would hope, considerable success, since repurposing a cliché is an excellent way of getting attention.

Normally, you would say that somebody is a fish out of water, when they are in an environment where they do not feel either in control or able to thrive.

By turning it back into a simile you draw more attention to it, which provides you with the additional license needed to make use of a visual rather than psycho-social analogy.

All I can say is: nice one! I wish I'd thought of that.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

The ducks are a polyphyletic group in the family Anatidae, along with the geese and swans.

When identifying ducks, keep the following principle in mind: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's either a duck or a duck-shaped robot. Be careful, though - sometimes ducks can be downright daffy!

To learn about ducks and other waterfowl, see the Ducks Unlimited website here: http://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-biology/waterfowl-research-and-resources

The idiom "like a fish out of water" basically means the person or thing is completely clueless or directionless when put into unfamiliar surroundings or an unfamiliar situation.

In your particular context of flopping around in bed, that's not quite the way that idiom is used. I can certainly visualise the imagery of convulsing all over the place like a fish taken out of the water or put onto land, but that's not really how "a fish out of water" is used. Frankly, it would've been better to describe the whole situation along the lines of "you were flipflopping in bed like a fish gasping for dear life on dry land." You get the general idea.

Thanks for the A2A.

It is an idiom — but it’s “test the water(s),” not “taste” and not “every.”

This idiom has at least three overlapping meanings depending on your context:—

• to probe if something is likely to be successful or worthwhile before you do it;
  [1]
  [2]
• to check people’s reaction to a decision, plan or action before you commit (or tell others to commit);
  [3]
  [4]
• (U.S. politics) to explore the feasibility of running for political office.
  [5]

The idiom has existed since Middle English (12c.–16c.). The Oxford English Dictionary’s first entry was just after the English Civil War in 1652 (John French, The Yorkshire Spaw), fluctuating between two forms (“taking the waters” vs. “testing the waters”).

Footnotes

Origin:

This expression dates back to the year 1483 when it was used by English writer Geoffrey Chaucer in his famous book, The Canterbury Tales, to describe one of the characters who did not feel comfortable riding a horse.

Definition:

A person who is uncomfortable in an unfamiliar situation.

This expression is commonly used to describe the intense discomfort or lack of knowledge that a person has when he is trying to do something that he has never done, and that does not come naturally to him.

This phrase can describe anyone who has been placed out of his natural habitat and does not know what to do

What Does A Fish Out Of Water Mean? - Writing Explained.

It's an alliteration that helps us remember like peacocks and paradise birds, parrots and pigeons. The phrase reminds us of Aesop's fables using animals as the examples of Man acting in inferior ways instead of the more noble ways that the parables of Jesus could make us emulate. The phrases are meant for humans rather than for the animals. We don't give advice to animals in the same way every time. We may communicate with our pets and the tone of our voice may have more meaning than mentioning words they've never heard of before or understand if repeated dozens of times. Saying such things to children is another matter, if we explain ourselves beyond the phrases we remember from childhood, or we've just discovered as adults. So if we call Fred a Scrooge, or a Grinch, we're going to get the message across better if others have understood what these actually mean. Notice the phrase that Richard explained as 'playing ducks and drakes', which uses the word play... as if playing the fool, rather than playing it safe. So even one word can be explained further when more text is added.