Let's hope this good news for "milkshake duck" doesn't turn out ...
Nevermind — by now it probably already has.
Milkshake duck — a term born in the twittersphere that describes an overnight social media sensation whose viral support rapidly dissolves with closer scrutiny — was chosen Monday as an Australian dictionary's word of 2017.
Macquarie Dictionary, the definitive authority on Australian English, defines a milkshake duck as: "a person who is initially viewed positively by the media but is then discovered to have something questionable about them which causes a sharp decline in their popularity."
The phrase was coined in a June 2016 tweet by @pixelatedboat.
See, it's like Ken Bone. ’Member him? That guy who captured everyone's attention during the second Trump-Clinton debate? The red-sweater guy.
Yeah, well he hit it big, only to be dethroned days later when people started digging into his past . Ken's a milkshake duck.
While many Australians (like some of us) responded with a "Huh?" to the term, the staff at Macquarie stood firm.
"Milkshake duck stood out as being a much needed term to describe something we are seeing more and more of, not just on the internet but now across all types of media," the committee said. "It plays to the simultaneous desire to bring someone down and the hope that they won't be brought down. In many ways it captures what 2017 has been about."
While coined in 2016, milkshake duck was not included in the dictionary until last year.
Of course, the ultimate irony was observed by none other than @pixelatedboat.