Meaning – to take to something very easily or naturally as if it were innate, often while enjoying it

Why? Soon after hatching, ducks follow their parents to nearby water and can swim with little instruction or guidance. The ability to swim is hardwired into their DNA and it is instinctive behaviour, as opposed to learned behaviours which must be taught.

Even ducklings raised domestically and without a mother duck will know how to swim. However, at first, they must only be allowed to swim in shallow water for a few minutes at a time, as they do not start producing the oil that protects their feathers until they are about 8 weeks old. In the wild, their mother rubs the oil from her body on to them.

Meaning – the short-sighted destruction of a valuable resource, usually due to greed.

Why? From one of Aesop’s fables in which a farmer and his wife kill a goose who lays a golden egg every day because they think her insides must be made of gold too.

Variations of the story exist in other cultures. In the Buddhist monastic book, the Vinya, for example, the father of a poor family is reborn as a swan with golden feathers. The family is allowed to pluck a single feather occasionally, so they can support themselves, but the greedy mother eventually plucks all the feathers at once which turn into ordinary feathers. When the swan regrows new feathers, they too are no longer gold.

Meaning – a burden someone has to carry, often as retribution for doing something wrong, or as a curse.

Why? From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which a sailor shoots and kills an albatross and is forced to wear the carcass of the dead bird around his neck.

Meaning – to emphasise that something is no longer working, or is obsolete, outdated, or unavailable

Why? The dodo was a flightless bird native to Mauritius, that became extinct in the 17^th century. An early use of the expression can be attributed to Michael Davitt, the Irish republican activist who in 1891 said of the Irish nationalist politician Charles Parnell, “After the next general election Mr. Parnell will have only four followers. Except as a private member of Parliament he is as dead as a dodo.”

Meaning – Small bumps on the skin around the hair follicles that occur as a result of feeling cold, nervous, anxious, fearful, or from sexual arousal.

Why? Goose feathers grow from pores in the epidermis that resemble human hair follicles. When the feathers are plucked, small protrusions are left behind, which are similar to the human phenomenon.

It is not known why the goose was chosen in English, as other birds share the same anatomical feature. In other languages, such as Japanese, Dutch, French, and Spanish, the hen or chicken are used.

Meaning – very wet and rainy weather, usually used as a humorous greeting.

Why? Although very heavy rain isn’t actually that lovely for ducks as it can wash away the oil on their feathers that protect them when swimming, the expression comes about because ducks appear to be so at home in water.

A nice example of the phrase appears in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop:

Mr Swiveller complied, and looking about him with a propritiatory smile, observed that last week was a fine week for the ducks, and this week was a fine week for the dust; he also observed that whilst standing by the post at the street-corner, he had observed a pig with a straw in his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which appearance he augured that another fine week for the ducks was approaching, and that rain would certainly ensue.