DECOY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Decoy

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/dəkˈɔɪ/ Listen

noun

Decoy n.

Anything intended to lead into a snare; a lure that deceives and misleads into danger, or into the power of an enemy; a bait.

A fowl, or the likeness of one, used by sportsmen to entice other fowl into a net or within shot.

A place into which wild fowl, esp. ducks, are enticed in order to take or shoot them.

A person employed by officers of justice, or parties exposed to injury, to induce a suspected person to commit an offense under circumstances that will lead to his detection.

verb

Decoy v. t. (past & past part. decoyed; pres. part. decoying) To lead into danger by artifice; to lure into a net or snare; to entrap; to insnare; to allure; to entice; as, to decoy troops into an ambush; to decoy ducks into a net. "Did to a lonely cot his steps decoy." "E'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy."

Synonyms: To entice; tempt; allure; lure. See Allure.

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Etymology of 'Decoy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Decoy" Quotes from Famous Books

... seized Hanover. He talked of making a descent on England. He gathered a vast army near Boulogne, and constructed an immense flotilla for the transportation of it across the Channel. His design was to decoy away the British fleet, and then to concentrate enough ships of his own in the Channel to protect the passage of ...

— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... have done it better," Allen agreed whimsically, while the girls waited with unconcealed impatience. "Anyway, he wrote a short note—a decoy—to Adolph in this handwriting, requesting an interview at the very spot where you girls came ...

— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Lincoln. Lincoln had found fault with the resolutions because they were not adopted on the right spot. Lincoln and his friends were great on "spots." Lincoln had opposed the Mexican War because American blood was not shed on American soil in the right spot. Trumbull and Lincoln were like two decoy ducks which lead the flock astray. Ambition, personal ambition, had led to the formation of the Black Republican party. Lincoln and his friends were now only trying to secure what Trumbull had cheated them out of in 1855, when the senatorship ...

— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... up, so that the experiments, begun with four subjects, were continued with fourteen, a number not attained during the whole of my previous searches, which were unpremeditated and in which no bait was used as decoy. My trapper's ruse was ...

— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

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