drake

Word family

• duck
  nounA2
• duckling
  nounB1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Drake belongs to a set of English words that name the male of a bird species. Each pair follows the same logic — a general word for the animal and a specific word for the male: duck and drake, goose and gander, chicken and cock (or rooster), turkey and tom. Unlike some of these, drake is not widely known outside rural or birdwatching circles. A learner who knows the pattern can guess that drake is to duck as gander is to goose, making the word easier to remember. In everyday speech, most English speakers simply say 'male duck' rather than drake, unless they are birdwatchers, farmers, or writing about wildlife.

Common collocations

Etymology

Drake has been used in English for a male duck since the Middle Ages. It likely developed from an older Germanic form — compare the modern German word Enterich (drake) and the Dutch word woord (a different root for male duck). Interestingly, drake is unrelated to the word duck itself, which comes from Old English dūce, meaning 'diver'. The two words arrived in English through different paths and only later became the standard male-female pair. The same spelling drake also once meant 'dragon' in older English (from Latin draco), but that sense is now obsolete outside poetry and fantasy fiction.