lame duck
noun, verb
Forms lame ducks lame ducking lame ducked lame-duck lameduck
- noun (colloquial) A person or thing that is helpless, inefficient, or disabled.
- noun (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.”
- noun (finance, slang, dated) A person who cannot fulfill their contracts.
- noun (computing) A server that continues to serve ongoing requests while refusing new ones, allowing for graceful shutdown.
- verb (informal, transitive, intransitive) To behave in the manner of a lame duck.
Synonyms
Etymology
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.
Sources: Wiktionary — from the Wiktionary entry “lame duck”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details