Sitting Duck.
The term 'sitting duck' was not used in its current form until 1933, when Smilin' Mudguts Walker's song "Sitting Duck Blues" was released for the electric phonograph. Prior to this the phrase had been more correctly known as "sitting Ducs"; "Ducs" being the old French noble title for the overseer of a duchy.
Smilin' Mudguts, an illiterate Iowan corn-shucker, mistakenly believed he had lost millions on the stock market in 1929, and thus had turned to an itinerant life of blues music for solace and a source of income. "Sitting Duck Blues" captured the tenor of the times and was purchased in record numbers for the era, despite its obvious mispronunciation and misspelling of the key term, and musical encrapitude.
The original term "sitting Ducs" is thought to be a reference to medieval court doctrine which always seated the Ducs of any gathering with their backs to the open door, thus making them far easier to perforate with crossbow quarrels when they weren't looking.
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