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Treasure Island vocabulary
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ducks and drakes
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synonyms: drakestoning ???
tags: [recreation]
► definition
Definition:skipping rocks---a school-boy's amusement, practised with pieces of tile, oyster-shells, or flattish stones, which being skimmed along the surface of a pond, or still river, rebound many times.To make ducks and drakes of one's money; to throw it idly away.Francis Grose. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Photo: by Mike Newbry, CC0, https://unsplash.com/photos/2ZWoY8-b1bE
► uses
Uses:
We'll have favourable winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in finding the spot, and money to eat, to roll in, to play duck and drake with ever after.
Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island (1883)
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Quicksilver: Why, do nothing, be like a gentleman, be idle; the curse of man is labour. Wipe thy bum with testones, and make ducks and drakes with shillings.
John Marston, George Chapman, Ben Jonson. Eastward Ho (1605)
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a fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a cool 100 pounds a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. James Joyce. Ulysses
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She liked her servants to be fed properly. Here, it’s been just the same again to-day; we haven’t had time for so much as to break a crust of bread; everything goes like ducks and drakes.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 3]
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He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat.
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)
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