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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sucker.

A person or animal that sucks, especially a breast or udder; especially a suckling animal, young mammal before it is weaned.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsʌk.ə/UK/ˈsʌk.ɚ/General-American
  1. A person or animal that sucks, especially a breast or udder; especially a suckling animal, young mammal before it is weaned.

  2. 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.

  3. A parasite; a sponger.

    broadly
  4. 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.

  5. A thing that works by sucking something.

  6. The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.

  7. A pipe through which anything is drawn.

  8. 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.

  9. A suction cup.

    UK · colloquial
  10. An animal such as the octopus and remora, which adhere to other bodies with such organs.

  11. 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.

  12. A lollipop; a piece of candy which is sucked.

    US · informal
  13. A hard drinker.

    archaic · slang
  14. An inhabitant of Illinois.

    US · obsolete
  15. 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.

    US · obsolete
  16. A person who is easily deceived, tricked or persuaded to do something; a naive or gullible person.

    US · slang
    One poor sucker had actually given her his life’s savings.
  17. A person irresistibly attracted by something specified.

    informal
    I'm a sucker for ghost stories.
    He must be a sucker for punishment to try to climb that mountain barefoot.
  18. The penis.

    British · obsolete · slang · vulgar
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *sūkaną Proto-West Germanic *sūkan Old English sūcan Middle English souken Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere Middle English souker English sucker 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”).

verb/ˈsʌk.ə/UK/ˈsʌk.ɚ/General-American
  1. To strip the suckers or shoots from; to deprive of suckers.

    transitive
    to sucker maize
  2. To produce suckers; to throw up additional stems or shoots.

    intransitive
  3. To move or attach oneself by means of suckers.

    intransitive
  4. To fool someone; to take advantage of someone.

    informal · transitive
    The salesman suckered him into signing an expensive maintenance contract.
  5. To lure someone.

    informal · transitive · usually
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *sūkaną Proto-West Germanic *sūkan Old English sūcan Middle English souken Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere Middle English souker English sucker 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”).

noun/ˈsʌk.ə/UK/ˈsʌk.ɚ/General-American
  1. Any thing or object.

    emphatic · slang
    See if you can get that sucker working again.
  2. A person.

    derogatory · slang
Where this word comes from

Possibly from German Sache (“thing”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.