Canard
A canard, meaning in French, a duck, has come to mean in English a hoax or fabricated newspaper story. Its origin is amusing. About fifty years ago a French journalist contributed to the French press an experiment, of which he declared himself to have been the author. Twenty ducks were placed together, and one of them, having been cut up into very small pieces, was gluttonously gobbled up by the other nineteen. Another bird was then sacrificed for the remainder, and so on, until one duck was left, which thus contained in its inside the other nineteen! This the journalist ate. The story caught on, and was copied into all the newspapers of Europe.