dead ducknoun [ C usually singular ]
uk/ˌded ˈdʌk/us/ˌded ˈdʌk/informalsomeone or something that is very unlikely to be successful, especially because of a mistake or bad judgment:
Thanks to the lack of market research, the project was a dead duck right from the start.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Failures
- a dog's breakfast idiom
- another/the final nail in the coffin idiom
- breakdown
- car crash
- cock-up
- dead loss
- free fall
- hash
- lemon
- lost cause
- lulu
- mess
- mess-up
- might-have-been
- parody
- slush pile
- track record
- train wreck
- turkey
- underachiever
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