Graffiti artist Banksy unmasked ... as a former public schoolboy from middle-class suburbia. He is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. To some a genius, to others a vandal. Always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage in equal measure.
A canard is an aircraft design which places the large main wing behind the smaller horizontal stabilizer. This results in a triangular shape of the aircraft, similar to a duck in flight, which is where the term canard originated (the word canard is french for duck).
The French phrase means, literally, to half-sell ducks. No one now knows just what was meant by to half-sell; the proverb was probably based on some story widely known at the time, but the details have not survived. At any rate, the expression led to the use of canard, the French word for duck, with the meaning a hoax or a fabrication.. English speakers adopted this canard in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of canard, used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft. Origin and Etymology of canard French, literally, duck; in sense 1, from Medieval French vendre des canards Ã  moitiÃ© to cheat, literally, to half-sell ducks