An Australian Dictionary Named ‘Milkshake Duck’ As Their ‘Word Of The Year’ And It’s Brilliant

Milkshake Duck

Shutterstock / Enessa Varnaeva


I’ve never heard the term ‘Milkshake Duck’ until last week. I have, however, seen the ‘Milkshake Duck’ phenomenon play out in the public eye countless times over the past few years.

If like me, you’ve never heard the term ‘Milkshake Duck’ then you’re not alone. The Macquarie Dictionary from Australia named it as their 2017 ‘Word of the Year’ and Twitter pretty much lost it shit. Why? Well, nobody had ever heard of it before. Also, the term ‘Milkshake Duck’ was invented by popular Twitter user @pixelatedboat back in the Summer of 2016.

The word is used to describe someone who sees overnight fame on social media before the public finds skeletons in their closet and the public turns on that person within days for actually being a sketchy person.

Word of the Year? Sure. We needed a term to describe the Ken Bone’s of the world after they become famous overnight only to find that there’s a cache of weird content and comments hidden on their Reddit account.

Twitter Moments was torn on whether or not this should’ve been the Word of the Year. Mostly because most people had never heard of it before. But some people were pretty enthusiastic about why this was the perfect choice for 2017 Word of the Year:

Milkshake Duck is here to stay. It’s a term we needed and now we have it in the English dictionary. Anyone hating on this phrase hasn’t spent enough time watching people gain overnight fame in the media only to be discovered as closeted racists or bigots. It happens like once a month these days and Milkshake Duck is the term we needed to describe it. Shout out to @pixelatedboat for making this all happen.