garganey
noun
garganey is a noun meaning “A small dabbling duck, Anas querquedula, that breeds in much of Europe and western Asia, and winters in Africa” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-A-R-G-A-N-E-Y, and it appears about once in every 72 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of garganey is garganeys.
What does garganey mean?
noun
- 1
A small dabbling duck, Anas querquedula, that breeds in much of Europe and western Asia, and winters in Africa.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of garganey
- garganeys plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is garganey?
Garganey appears about once in every 72 million words in written English, the 269,040th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Garganey in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense duck:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sarcelle d'été |
| German | Knäkente |
| Portuguese | marreco, pato-marreco, cerceta |
| Spanish | cerceta |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does garganey come from?
From the Italian/Lombard language word gargenei, variant of garganello, by dissimilation of earlier *gargalella, diminutive of *gargala, ultimately from Late Latin gargala (“tracheal artery”), from the root *garg (“throat”), imitative of gargling, see also Ancient Greek γαργαρεών (gargareṓn, “uvula, trachea”). The English usage owes its origins to Conrad Gesner, who used the Italian name in the third volume of his Historiae Animalium (History of Animals) of 1555.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).