<P> When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck . </P> <P> The more common wording of the phrase may have originated much later with Emil Mazey, secretary - treasurer of the United Auto Workers, at a labor meeting in 1946 accusing a person of being a communist: </P> <P> I can't prove you are a Communist . But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks--I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck . </P> <P> The term was later popularized in the United States by Richard Cunningham Patterson Jr., United States ambassador to Guatemala in 1950 during the Cold War, who used the phrase when he accused the Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government of being Communist . Patterson explained his reasoning as follows: </P>

Who said if it looks like a duck