Other forms: mallards
A mallard is the common wild duck with a green head. A pair of mallards, feed the mallards, a mallard drake.
The green head belongs to the male; the female is a mottled brown and does the quacking, since the male's call is a quiet rasp. Nearly every domestic duck breed descends from it. Mallard was also the name of the fastest steam locomotive ever built.
1nounmallardThe common wild duck with a green head.
“A mallard and her ducklings waddled across the path to the pond.”
mallard is a bird.
Old French malard probably comes from male, a male, with an ending marking a person or thing.
Old French
malard
Middle English
malard
English, today
mallard
Built from
From Middle English malard, mawlard, from Old French malard, malart, mallart (“male wild duck”), from Old French male, masle (“male”) + -ard, -art. Cognate with Medieval Latin maslardus, mallardus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Birds