lame duck

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lame duck (politics)

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• lame-duck

Equivalent to lame +‎ duck. First use appears c. 1761, in the London Evening Post. Derived from the situation in which a person who had defaulted in the London Stock Exchange was said to waddle out of Exchange Alley like a lame duck. Verbal form first appears c. 1910.

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lame duck (plural lame ducks)

1. (colloquial) A person or thing that is helpless, inefficient, or disabled.
   • 1763 January, anonymous author, The Gentleman's and London Magazine, page 288:

     Thus is happens, that, when a considerable loss arises from such contract, the principal on whole behalf it was made, refuses to fulfil it; in this case, the loss falls upon the broker, without remedy; and if he does not fulfil the contract in default of his prinicipal, he foreits his credit and business, and becomes, in the cant of the Alley, a lame duck.

   • 1825, Ned Clinton; or The Commissary, page 186:

     A few days after our dinner at the Albion, Glover's city speculations, in spite of his unceasing attention in watching the marker, went altogether wrong, and the poor fellow waddled away from Chapel Court a defaulter, or as the stock-brokers emphatically called it, a lame duck.

   • 2024 January 10, Howard Johnston, “Launched for enthusiasts - now it's for everyone”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 28:

     Reflecting on this in our 800th issue seven years ago, RAIL said the broad government view in 1981 was that BR was a lame duck.

2. (US, politics) An elected official who has lost the recent election or is not eligible for reelection and is marking time until leaving office.

   Congressman Jones was a lame duck and did not vote on many issues that were important to his constituents.

   • 1968 October 3, Congressional Record, page 29513, column 2:

     This is a lame duck administration, and if it is going to pass out political favors worth multimillions of dollars per year, it must move.

   • 1969 January 12, Benjamin Welles, “A Hot Potato for Nixon”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     The “lame duck” Johnson Administration, in its final fortnight in office, grappled last week with a diplomatic hot potato in the form of the latest Soviet proposal for a “just and lasting” Middle East peace settlement.

   • 2024 July 22, Ed Pilkington, “Can lame duck Joe Biden give legs to Harris campaign in final six months?”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     So it is quite possible that there will be a Biden bounce in the last six months of his presidency, even if he is a lame duck. The question is, what will he do with it?

3. (finance, slang, dated) A person who cannot fulfill their contracts.

lame duck (third-person singular simple present lame ducks, present participle lame ducking, simple past and past participle lame ducked)

1. (informal, transitive, intransitive) To behave in the manner of a lame duck.

• dead man walking
• dead duck
• sitting duck