ὦ @rigoding2 - Tumblr Blog

Old French for “duck” = “quanard” (echoing “quack” of the duck) > vendre des canard à moitié (“to sell the duck by the half”), a saying for the “punch-line of a joke,” based upon the story that a duck-seller undercut his rival duck-seller by selling ducks for only “TWO FRANCS” in big letters, with deceptively small text on the same sign below: “à moitié,” i.e. for half the duck > English, by synecdoche, “canard”: a statement, while facially or apparently true, deceptive and false upon closer inspection.

#etymology