dead duck

1. 1.

   something doomed to failure

   “he finally admitted that the legislation was a dead duck”

   “the idea of another TV channel is now a dead duck”

   “as theories go, that's a dead duck”

   Broaderfailure

Questions about dead duck

What does dead duck mean?

dead duck means "something doomed to failure".

Is dead duck a common word?

dead duck is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.