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Last night, I couldn’t recall the subject of the idiom “if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it’s probably a duck”. Was it a chicken? A soup spoon?

I got to wondering what other terms people have applied this idiom to. Google knows the answer:

• “If it looks like Fascism; if it sounds like Fascism; if it clicks its heels and asks for your papers like Fascism–what do you call it?”
• “If it looks like Satan, if it smells like Satan, if it acts like Satan, if it sounds like Satan, maybe George W. Bush really is Satan?”
• “If it looks like cognitive dissonance, and if it sounds like cognitive dissonance, then it must be cognitive dissonance.”
• “Premier, if it looks like voucher, if it sounds like a voucher, if it robs our public school system of money just like a voucher, if the Fraser Institute calls it a voucher, why not acknowledge that this is a voucher?”
• “If it looks like love, if it sounds like love, if it feels like love … then it probably is love.”
• “if it looks like a man…if it sounds like a man…if it smells like a man–then well, I think most people would say that it’s a man. :-) Or at least, not feminine.”
• “If it looks like a vegetable orchestra…If it sounds like a vegetable orchestra…then it stands to reason that it probably is, in fact, a vegetable orchestra.”

Predictably, most usages are political in nature.

UPDATE: In the comments, Neal notes that it’s supposed to be “looks like a duck and quacks like a duck”. I think he’s right, though clearly I’m not alone in getting it wrong. Regardless, that structure produces a whole other set of entertaining results.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 9:52 am and is filed under Words. Tag Testing Project: No Tags. Photo by . You can skip to the end and leave a response, or trackback from your own site. If you don't see your comment within a day or so, drop me an email. Sometimes my comment spam filter gets overly zealous.