Hello,
This week for a change I decided to investigate the origin of a phrase rather than a word, and as often happens when I embark on that task, I discovered it’s well nigh impossible to get a definitive answer. Ah well, it’s a fun phrase so let’s dive in.
The definition of the phrase to get/have your ducks in a row is straight-forward at least. It means you’re well organised in advance for something which is going to happen. This week, for example, is the last of the school holidays here so I’m getting my ducks in a row for school-books, lunches, and uniforms for my school-going teen.
Before I get started on the phrase – where do we get the word duck from? This one goes back to Old English. The original word there for these water birds, from a presumed root word (aneti), was ened. Thankfully as some point during the Old English period this was replaced by duce (a ducker) drawn from the verb ducan (to duck or dive) so the bird was named for what it does, ducking underwater to find its dinner.
By the late 1500s you might be called duck or ducky as an affectionate term. We humans have liked ducks for many centuries. Duckys was also used as slang for breasts by King Henry VIII in a letter to Anne Boleyn in 1536. Another drawback for being a monarch, they never destroy your letters.
Now for the phrase. If you’ve ever seen a mother duck leading her brood from nest to water then you’ll probably have noticed that the ducklings follow her closely in a line from beak to tail, like the way young elephants follow the matriarchs of their family by holding tails with their trunks. It’s highly probable that this organised manner of preparing for a swim leads us to getting your ducks in a row.
However, there are other contenders for the history of this phrase and they merit inclusion here as they are widely spread even without proof in print. As usual the earliest citation is important. In this case it appears to be this line in the Washington Post, June 1932 – “We have a world filled today with problems and we are trying to get our economic ducks in a row”.
Two of the possible origin stories for the phrase are drawn from the world of sport. The first comes from pool (a game similar to billiards and snooker). A duck is the pool term for a ball sitting right in front of a pocket, an easy shot. To have your ducks in a row in this case is to have all your balls sitting in front of pockets, ready to be sunk in series. Thus far there’s no sign of the phrase in print relating to this auspicious state of play but it’s possible.
The second comes from ten pin bowling. Early bowling pins were shorter and fatter than the ones we use today and they were nicknamed ducks, probably because of their squat shape. This was a time before machines reset the pins between attempts. Hence having your ducks in a row meant you had reset the pins yourself and were ready to bowl another ball.
Other theories reference the shooting of a row of tin ducks at a fair-ground range, and the organised way wild ducks and geese fly in a V formation through the sky, hence keeping the entire group on track, just like mother duck and her ducklings.
For the moment at least, the jury is out on this one but I think we can agree that ducks both in the air and on the ground are organised creatures which inspire us to get our act together.
Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
Wordfoolery 
The German for duck is Ente, so this explains where that came from! Thanks.