Drakelet

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A young male duck that has not yet reached full adult plumage or maturity
2. The immature male of a duck species, still a juvenile in appearance and size
3. A young male waterfowl, typically a duck, before it has grown into adulthood

Etymology: "Drakelet" is built from two parts that each have a history of their own. The first is "drake," which in English most often means a male duck, though the same spelling was also used for a dragon, a sense that survives in older poetry. The second part, "-let," is a diminutive suffix, borrowed through Old French from Latin "-ellus" and "-ella," and it is what turns a noun into a smaller version of itself: a "booklet" is a little book, a "piglet" a little pig. Because "drake" could mean both a duck and a dragon, the word has two possible readings, and the source lists both. Read as "drake" the duck, "drakelet" is a small male duck. Read as "drake" the dragon, it is a little dragon, making it a doublet of "dragonlet," a word with the same meaning formed from the same root by a different route. The two words grew from the same ancient source, so "drakelet" and "dragonlet" are close relatives that took separate paths into English.

Synonyms: duckling