sucker
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsʌk.ə/
ipa: /ˈsʌk.ɚ/
rhymes: -ʌkə(ɹ)
homophone: succor
Forms: form: suckers
Etymology: From Middle English souker, sokere, sukkere, soukere, equivalent to suck (verb) + -er. Compare Saterland Frisian Suuger, West Frisian sûker (“sucker”), Dutch zuiger (“sucker”), German Sauger (“dummy; vacuum”).
Senses: examples: text: Sir Gregory. I promise you, not a house-rabbit, sir. Sir Perfidious. No sucker on ’em all.
ref: 1647, Uncertain, perhaps Beaumont and Fletcher or Thomas Middleton and William Rowley?, Wit at Several Weapons, act 3, scene 1, page 44:
glosses: A person or animal that sucks, especially a breast or udder; especially a suckling animal, young mammal before it is weaned.
topics: agriculture
business
horticulture
lifestyle
glosses: An undesired stem growing out of the roots or lower trunk of a shrub or tree, especially from the rootstock of a grafted plant or tree.
examples: text: They who constantly converse with men far above their estates shall reap shame and loss thereby; if thou payest nothing, they will count thee a sucker, no branch.
ref: 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Prophane State:
text: Of the scaly tribe, I may mention those suckers belonging to the body loaferish, that never rise to the surface of respectability, but are always groveling in the mud of corruption, whose sole study appears to be to see how much they can get without the least physical exertion; and who would rather ride to hell in a hand-cart than walk to heaven supported by the staff of industry.
ref: 1841, Elbridge Gerry [Dow, Jr.] Paige, Short Patent Sermons, revised and corrected edition, New York: Lawrence Labree, page 232:
synonyms: word: bloodsucker
word: bummer
word: freeloader
word: free rider
word: gadfly
word: leech
word: mooch
word: moocher
word: parasite
word: scrounge
word: scrounger
word: scunge
word: smell-feast
word: sponge
word: sponger
word: sucker
word: trencher mate
glosses: A parasite; a sponger.
glosses: An organ or body part that does the sucking; especially a round structure on the bodies of some insects, frogs, and octopuses that allows them to stick to surfaces.
glosses: A thing that works by sucking something.
examples: text: The last Mr. Hobbs’s principal explanations, is of the experiment wherein above 100 pound weight, being hung at the depress’d sucker, the sucker was, notwithstanding, impell’d up again, by the air, to the top of the cylinder.
ref: 1725, Robert Boyle, The Philosophical Works, page 687:
glosses: The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.
glosses: A pipe through which anything is drawn.
glosses: A small piece of leather, usually round, having a string attached to the center, which, when saturated with water and pressed upon a stone or other body having a smooth surface, adheres, by reason of the atmospheric pressure, with such force as to enable a considerable weight to be thus lifted by the string; formerly used by children as a plaything.
glosses: A suction cup.
glosses: An animal such as the octopus and remora, which adhere to other bodies with such organs.
topics: biology
ichthyology
natural-sciences
zoology
glosses: Any fish in the family Catostomidae of North America and eastern Asia, which have mouths modified into downward-pointing, suckerlike structures for feeding in bottom sediments.
glosses: A lollipop; a piece of candy which is sucked.
synonyms: word: soaker
word: suck-pint
word: alco
word: alcoholic
word: alkie
word: bacchanal
word: bacchant
word: barfly
word: bibber
word: booze artist
word: boozehound
word: boozer
word: borachio
word: bouser
word: carouser
word: cupster
word: dipso
word: dipsomaniac
word: drinker
word: drunk
word: drunkard
word: fuddlecap
word: fuddler
word: grog artist
word: guzzler
word: inebriate
word: juicehead
word: lick-wimble
word: lush
word: lusher
word: maltworm
word: pisshead
word: pisspot
word: plonko
word: reel-pot
word: rinse-pitcher
word: rumpot
word: shicker
word: slubberdegullion
word: soak
word: soaker
word: sot
word: souse
word: sponge
word: squeeze-grape
word: sucker
word: suck-pint
word: swill-belly
word: swill-bowl
word: swill-flagon
word: swill-pot
word: swill-tub
word: swillking
word: tippler
word: toper
word: tosspot
word: tun
word: winebibber
word: winesop
word: wino
glosses: A hard drinker.
examples: text: There is a swarm of 'suckers,' 'hoosiers,' 'buckeyes,' 'corn-crackers,' and 'wolverines,' eternally on the qui vive, in those parts—a migratory race of bipeds—who float about from spot to spot, 'squatting,' for the nonce, wherever their fancy or interest may incline them; and a rougher set of men will rarely be met with, saving the genuine 'voyageurs,' or 'trappers'—so notorious for their hardihood.
ref: 1848, Francis Alexander Durivage, George P. Burnham, “How the Wolverine Discovered the Lead Mine—A Fact”, in Stray Subjects, Arrested And Bound Over, page 79:
text: A band of music was sent thirty miles to wake up the sleepy suckers, and draw them, by the magic of their music, to the Douglas gathering at Quincy, Illinois.
ref: 1854 October 19, New York Tribune:
synonyms: Illinoisian
glosses: An inhabitant of Illinois.
glosses: A migrant lead miner working in the Driftless Area of northwest Illinois, southwest Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa, working in summer and leaving for winter, so named because of the similarity to the migratory patterns of the North American Catostomidae.
examples: text: One poor sucker had actually given her his life’s savings.
text: This ſucker thinks nane wiſe. / But him that can to immenſe riches riſe:
ref: 1728, Allan Ramsay, “The General Mistake”, in The Poems of Allan Ramsay, new edition, volume 1, published 1800, page 352:
text: They had sorcerized me, and I were a done-over sucker; so I jist gin up. No sooner had we ’rove at the boat, instead o’ feastin’ me on gully-whompin oysters, they nabbed me quick as a snappin’ turtle
ref: 1859, Oliver Stanley, “The Escape from the Whale”, in Hardin E. Taliaferro, editor, Fisher's River (North Carolina): Scenes and Characters, page 126:
text: “George, them fellows took me for a sucker. Do I look like a sucker?” ¶ “No, Bill; you look like a nice, smart counter-hopper,” I replied.
ref: 1887, George Devol, Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi, page 221:
text: Then he burst into a stream of horrible profanity. "What's the game?" he cried, glaring round him. "Do you think I am easy and that you can play me for a sucker? Is it a frame-up, or what?
ref: 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
text: “After twenty years you’re still a sucker for her lies? […]”
ref: 1934, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 13, in The Thin Man, New York: Vintage, published 1972, page 59:
text: The rates here were unbelievable - $30 a day each. As you walk through the front door, they stamp "sucker" on your forehead.
ref: 1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer:
synonyms: word: chump
word: fall guy
word: fish
word: fool
word: gull
word: mark
word: mug
word: patsy
word: rube
word: schlemiel
word: soft touch
word: chump
word: chumpion
word: cousin
word: cull
word: cully
word: dupe
word: dotterel
word: easy mark
word: fall guy
word: fish
word: gudgeon
word: gull
word: juggins
word: live one
word: mark
word: mug
word: muggins
word: pigeon
word: rube
word: sap
word: saphead
word: schlemiel
word: sheep
word: simp
word: Simple Simon
word: soft touch
word: steamer
word: stiff
word: stooge
word: sucker
glosses: A person who is easily deceived, tricked or persuaded to do something; a naive or gullible person.
examples: text: I'm a sucker for ghost stories.
text: He must be a sucker for punishment to try to climb that mountain barefoot.
text: So don't be alarmed if he takes you by the arm / I won't let him win, but I'm a sucker for his charm / Trouble is a friend, yeah, trouble is a friend of mine, oh oh!
ref: 2009 September 1, Lenka, Tawgs Salter, “Trouble Is a Friend”, in Lenka, performed by Lenka:
text: 2015, Clutch, Sucker for the Witch
Oh, I begged and I pleaded like a fiend for a fix / I must unburden my guilty conscience / I admit it, I'm a sucker for the witch
glosses: A person irresistibly attracted by something specified.
examples: text: Thus to and again to our paſtime we went, / And my Cards I play'd fairly to Jenny's content; / I work'd at her Pump till my Sucker grew dry, / Then I left pumping, a good Reaſon why.
ref: 1750, “Ge ho, Dobbin or the Waggoner”, in The Tulip, page 2:
synonyms: word: anaconda
word: baloney pony
word: bald-headed hermit
word: banana
word: birdie
word: bobby
word: boonga
word: cack
word: choad
word: choda
word: chode
word: chopper
word: cigar
word: cock
word: corey
word: crank
word: cucumber
word: custard launcher
word: D
word: dick
word: dicklet
word: diddle
word: diddly
word: dingaling
word: ding-a-ling
word: ding-dong
word: dinger
word: dingle
word: dingus
word: dingy
word: dink
word: dinkle
word: dipstick
word: dirk
word: disco stick
word: dog bone
word: dong
word: donger
word: Donkey Kong
word: doodle
word: dork
word: down
word: fire hose
word: fuckpole
word: gherkin
word: hairy canary
word: hammer
word: hog
word: hot dog
word: hot rod
word: hoo-hoo
word: hooter
word: it
word: jade stalk
word: jamoke
word: jigger
word: jimmy
word: jock
word: johnson
word: John Thomas
word: joint
word: Jonathan
word: joystick
word: kielbasa
word: knob
word: lad
word: langer
word: lingam
word: love muscle
word: love stick
word: love truncheon
word: love sausage
word: love wand
word: machine
word: magnum
word: Master John Goodfellow
word: male member
word: manhood
word: man-meat
word: meat
word: meat puppet
word: meat rod
word: meat scepter
word: meatstick
word: meat stick
word: member
word: membrum virile
word: nature's scythe
word: nob
word: old chap
word: old fellow
word: one-eyed trouser snake
word: organ
word: package
word: pecker
word: peen
word: pee-pee
word: pee-wee
word: pego
word: penis
word: Percy
word: peter
word: phallus
word: pickle
word: piece
word: piece of pork
word: pike
word: pillicock
word: pingas
word: pink cigar
word: pink oboe
word: pintle
word: pipe
word: pisser
word: piston
word: pizzle
word: plonker
word: pork sword
word: prick
word: pud
word: purple-headed yogurt slinger
word: putz
word: p-word
word: python
word: ramrod
word: rape tool
word: rod
word: root
word: rutter
word: salami
word: sausage
word: schlong
word: schmuck
word: sex tool
word: shaft
word: shlong
word: shmekl (qualifier
word: colloquial
word: Yiddish)
word: short arm
word: skin flute
word: snake
word: snausage
word: spitstick
word: stem
word: stretcher
word: sucker
word: swipe
word: tadger
word: tagger
word: tail
word: tallywhacker
word: tarse
word: thing
word: thingy
word: third leg
word: tic tac
word: todger
word: tool
word: trouser monkey
word: trouser snake
word: truncheon
word: tube steak
word: unit
word: virile member
word: wang
word: weapon
word: wee-wee
word: weenie
word: weeny
word: whang
word: wick
word: widgie
word: widdler
word: wiener
word: willie
word: willy
word: wingwang
word: winkle
word: winky
word: yard
word: ying-yang
glosses: The penis.
Derived terms: all-day sucker
ass sucker
a sucker is born every minute
ballsucker
blood-sucker
bloodsucker
bogsucker
bottle-sucker
bum-sucker
bumsucker
carpsucker
choadsucker
chubsucker
clitsucker
clocksucker
cock sucker
cock-sucker
cocksucker
cogsucker
cow sucker
cuntsucker
cybersucker
desucker
dicksucker
goatsucker
gully sucker
hogsucker
honeysucker
kikesucker
Klamath smallscale sucker
Lost River sucker
lumpsucker
mudsucker
nutsucker
pseudosucker
quarter-sucker
rocksucker
sandsucker
sapsucker
scumsucker
self-sucker
selfsucker
sharksucker
shortnose sucker
solder sucker
Suckerberg
sucker bet
suckerfish
sucker for punishment
suckerhood
suckerish
suckerlet
suckerlike
suckermouth
sucker-punch
sucker punch
sucker tracks
sucker trap
Suckerville
suckery
swordfish sucker
there's a sucker born every minute
thumbsucker
titsucker
Uncle Sucker
whalesucker
wheelsucker
windsucker
wind-sucker
Zuni bluehead sucker