So He Sold Half A Duck

I recently used the words canard and ruse in the same sentence. I was not sure it was the correct use nor that they belong together, so I thought I would post what I find and where it goes.

Canard, unless you're cooking a duck or flying an airplane (in which case there are other meanings), is defined as a story, report or even a statement that is false or baseless. It can be derogatory but most uses I have seen of the word are more about intentionally misleading. Canard came to English prior to 1850 from the French word canard, which means "hoax." Canard (or quanart in Old French) literally means "duck." So how did the French word for duck come to refer to a hoax? It is apparently the result of a punch line to a French joke.

The joke is: A duck seller, the only one in the neighborhood, had a great business selling his ducks for 8 francs apiece. Soon another duck seller moved in and undercut the original vendor by selling his ducks for 7 francs each. A price war ensued, until the original duck seller was forced to lower his price to 3 francs. But he knew he could not stay in business at that price, so in small print below the three-franc price he wrote "vendre un canard à moitié." Pretty funny, eh? Oh, in English the phrase is "for half a duck." That subterfuge and punch line became equated with perpetuating a hoax, and our English meaning was born (or hatched).

A ruse, in addition to being the name of a Bulgarian city on the Danube, is a trick or an action intended to mislead. When it came to English in the early 1400s it referred to the dodging movements of a hunted animal. But by the 1620s it had expanded to refer to any action intended to mislead. It came from the Old French word ruse or reuse, a word backformed from reuser that came from the Latin word recusare, which means deny, reject or oppose. It turns out to be a tricky word etymologically, because it is thought by some to come from the Latin word for backward, rursus.

I used the word subterfuge earlier, and it is another word in this group. It is an action used to avoid the truth or evade a rule or consequences. It came to English in 1570 either from Middle French or Latin. The Middle French word subterfuge had been in use since the 1300s. The Medieval Latin word is subterfugium,  and is formed from subter, meaning under or beneath, and fugere, which means flee and from which we get fugitive (and fugacious).

So while subterfuge is fleeing from the truth to avoid the consequences, ruse is dodging the truth by intentionally misleading, and a canard is simply a statement or story that is not true (and in common usage intended to mislead). Subterfuge is cowardly, a canard may not be intended to be mean, but a ruse is usually intentional and bad.