A NEWSPAPER CANARD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 44, 1 November 1900, Page 15

A NEWSPAPER CANARD.

We say it is a ' canard ' when we read something highly improbable in the columns of any of the daily journals. Why 'canard'? Canard ia tho French for ' duck.' Why call an improbable Btory a newspaper ' duck ' 1 The following explanation was recently given ; it may be true or not ; it may be it-elf a canard. A gentleman in France once told a Htory to the effect that 20 ducks .were ravenoua wzth hunger. Thereupon, K> of them tore the twentieth into bits ami gobbled it up. There were now only 19 left. Eighteen of these ate up the nineteenth, and so on, and po on, until only one was left alive, with, of course, the other 11) intade him. The story Rot into the newspapers, was wi lely circulated, and as it was felt 10 be slightly improbable, any unlikely statement thereafter in a newspaper recalled the duck story and was labelled a ' canard.'