Meaning
A person or thing that is an easy, helpless target for attack, criticism, or exploitation, having little or no means of defense or escape. It is applied to anyone unusually exposed, not only to physical danger. Informal; conveys vulnerability and usually some sympathy or alarm for the target. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The metaphor comes from hunting: a duck sitting still on the water is far easier to shoot than one in flight, so a 'sitting duck' became shorthand for an unmissable target. Dictionary.com dates the first recorded use to 1940-1945, placing it in the first half of the 20th century, and it is often associated with wartime and aerial-combat contexts, where slow or grounded aircraft were described this way. Wiktionary's citation record documents continued strong use through the 2010s and 2020s, including in news reporting.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a sitting duck
- sitting ducks (plural)
- sitting target
Usage Examples
- With its firewall disabled, the server was a sitting duck for the ransomware gang.
- Pedestrians crossing that unlit intersection feel like sitting ducks after dark.
- The startup's single big client made it a sitting duck when that client walked away.