Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

For centuries, American hunters have used bird decoys to lure waterfowl into shotgun range. These waterbird doppelgangers are fashioned from a variety of buoyant materials: cork, reeds, canvas, and all types of wood.
The word decoy is not confined to the denomination of duck and goose lures. Over the centuries, its been applied to human impostors who entice innocents into dangerous situations. During wartime, decoy ships are employed to deceive and distract enemy vessels. Federal officials set decoy buck deer to draw the illegal fire of poachers.

The original decoys were neither lures nor impostors, but cages set over water. A decoy, says the Oxford English Dictionary of the 17th century use of the word, is "a pond or pool out of which run narrow arms...covered with network or other contrivances into which wild ducks or other fowl may be allured and there caught." The "covering of network" was probably willow, tightly woven to prevent the escape of the trapped birds.

This technology was used by the Dutch, whose word for cage is kooi. De kooi means "the cage". When the British adopted the woven device and its name in the early 17th century, they retained the definite article de and grafted it to the noun, so that the Dutch de kooi became the English decoy.

Eventually, this word came to indicate any device used to allure and entrap.

Radio Script > Decoy