How to Use sitting duck in a Sentence

sitting duck

noun
  • The tourists were sitting ducks for local thieves.
  • Club owners are kind of sitting ducks.
    — Keith Sharon, Nashville Tennessean, 21 Oct. 2025
  • In other words, a sitting duck.
    — Chris Stirewalt, The Hill, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Which had those seals, as Oats put it, out there in the open like sitting ducks.
    — Cj Moore, The Athletic, 18 Jan. 2025
  • Just like that, The Saviors are sitting ducks and get chewed to pieces.
    — Tyler McCarthy, Fox News, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Intercepts have been easy because the scout drones are sitting ducks.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 15 Oct. 2024
  • Newsom is a sitting duck waiting to get shellacked.
    — Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald, 30 Aug. 2025
  • Newgarden lamented his late tire choice, which left him a sitting duck over the final stint.
    — Jenna Fryer, Orlando Sentinel, 5 Sep. 2022
  • If something has gone wrong within that process, the antennas are sitting ducks.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 6 Jan. 2020
  • But even with historic status, the gateway pecan remains a sitting duck.
    — Dallas News, 1 Nov. 2022
  • But the Aucilla mastodons weren’t just sitting ducks for human hunters.
    — Jacob Mikanowski, The Atlantic, 19 Dec. 2017
  • In this case, that makes Dumars and his team sitting ducks for anyone else with designs on their score.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 22 Jan. 2026
  • Another unit is stranded when the tires of their transport are shot out, leaving them sitting ducks.
    — David Wiegand, kansascity, 3 Nov. 2017
  • Everyone else would be a sitting duck, or at the very least extremely annoyed.
    — Shane Harris, The Atlantic, 27 Apr. 2026
  • But then China and Russia showed such fat targets were sitting ducks.
    — Christian Davenport, Washington Post, 2 July 2023
  • Without such protections, people are sitting ducks for larvae in sand or soil.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Staying over one spot makes geosynchronous satellites sitting ducks but also protects them.
    — Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, 17 Jan. 2018
  • The uncertainty of being a sitting duck and all that pressure.
    — Neena Rouhani, Billboard, 21 Jan. 2022
  • All of us are sitting ducks and utterly dependent on outside help for survival.
    — Mayyu Ali, Time, 3 Apr. 2020
  • Other than Adobe, which is expensive but very good, these companies are not sitting ducks.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 17 Feb. 2026
  • This sitting duck would be another victim in the submarine’s reign of terror.
    — Sean Kingsley, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Feb. 2025
  • Without an active alarm system, a museum with breakable windows and fences is just a sitting duck.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 25 Nov. 2019
  • Tom Savage has been a sitting duck in recent weeks playing behind a substandard line.
    — Greg Rajan, Houston Chronicle, 10 Dec. 2017
  • If Bridgewater is a sitting duck because of the injuries, the Broncos will have to pull him.
    — cleveland, 21 Oct. 2021
  • In Ukraine, tanks—the backbone of 20th-century armies—have become sitting ducks for drones.
    — Nancy A. Youssef, The Atlantic, 17 June 2026
  • Rachel secures her spot in the Final 6, leaving Sam and Genevieve once again as sitting ducks.
    — Nick Caruso, TVLine, 4 Dec. 2024
  • Felling that Rhodes, up there on his plinth like a sitting duck, was a fairly simple process, technically speaking.
    — Hedley Twidle, Harper's Magazine, 23 Nov. 2021
  • At Tiananmen, the protesters were gathered in a large public square like sitting ducks where they could be easily mowed down.
    — Marc A. Thiessen, The Mercury News, 16 Aug. 2019
  • For several years, high school grads such as Leos were sitting ducks for the Selective Service.
    — Roy Bragg, San Antonio Express-News, 15 Apr. 2018
  • The new bases were sitting ducks, American planners sniffed, and could be taken out quickly in an actual conflict.
    — The Economist, 10 May 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sitting duck.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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