fuck a duck

In the late 1700s, a duck-fucker was, apparently, an actual job. This person was in charge of taking care of poultry on warships, and the term likely originated as a bit of teasing among shipmates.

Fuck a duck is first attributed to Henry Miller’s salacious classic Tropic of Cancer. Miller used fuck a duck with a mix of frustration and admiration, along the lines of a bemused “Well, goddamn!” The expression likely originated as a funny and fun-to-say rhyme.

In the 1970s, our feathery friend duck-fucker came back, this time as a slang equivalent to asshole.

Fuck a duck jumped from literature to the schoolyard and internet with “The Zoo Song,” a comedy song about bestiality sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The song begins “Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck, screw a kangaroo” and goes on to rhyme various slang terms for sex acts with the names of other animals.

Scottish comedian Brian Limond helped fuck a duck spread by using the phrase several times on his 2010–13 comedy show, The Limmy Show.

Fuck a duck garnered mainstream attention in 2011 when Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler made “Shit fire and save matches, fuck a duck and see what hatches” his catchphrase during his stint as a judge on American Idol. To the best of our ability, we translate this Tyler-ese as: “Well, that was interesting. Let’s see what comes of it.”