Eggcorn Forum

Several hundred web pages contain the phrase “duked into.” Three examples:

A ripoff report: “I was duked into to purchasing the affiliate package with Amazon.com Don’t make the mistake that I made Phoenix Arizona”

Blog entry: “We were duked into the tax increase by the city’s planning office”

Comment on blog: “We as humans harness much energy ourselves but we have been dumb down and duked into believing instead of knowing. ”

“Duke,” when used as a verb, means to fight. It usually occurs in the idiom “duke it out.” The verb derives from a nineteenth century noun for a hand or fist that may–its origin is disputed–derive from Cockney rhyming slang. In the majority of web examples the phrase “duked into” appears to mean “fooled into.” We could argue, I suppose, that the people using “duked into” are thinking about being forced into something by threats, the speakers substituting the coercion of compulsion for the coercion of deceit. This would make it a marginal eggcorn.

A more likely explanation for most of the examples of “duked into,” however, is the non-eggcorn substitution of the inappropriate “duked” for either “deked” or “duped.” “Deke,” from “decoy,” means to feint, fake out. It seems to be most at home in sport descriptions, especially in hockey narratives. “To dupe,” which appears to come from a sixteenth century French argot noun, also means to deceive.

A rare few of the examples of “duked into” are misspellings of “ducked into.”