A small rubber duck, often a toy for babies during bath time, or an affectionate way to call someone 'duck.'
Diminutive of 'duck' using the suffix '-ie' (also '-y'), commonly used to make words sound small, cute, or affectionate. The rubber duck toy became famous after the song 'Rubber Duckie' by Ernie on Sesame Street (1970).
The rubber duckie became a cultural phenomenon after Sesame Street, but programmers and engineers started using rubber ducks in 'debugging'—explaining code to a rubber duck helps you find your own mistakes, which is now a real software development technique called 'rubber duck debugging!'
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