sucker

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One that sucks, especially an unweaned domestic animal.
2. n. Informal One who is easily deceived; a dupe.
3. n. Informal One that is indiscriminately attracted to something specified: "The nation's capital is a sucker for a symbolic gesture” ( Jonathan Alter).
4. n. Slang An unspecified thing. Used as a generalized term of reference, often as an intensive: "our goal of getting that sucker on the air before old age took the both of us” ( Linda Ellerbee).
5. n. Slang A person. Used as a generalized term of reference, often as an intensive: He's a mean sucker.
6. n. A lollipop.
7. n. A piston or piston valve, as in a suction pump or syringe.
8. n. A tube or pipe, such as a siphon, through which something is sucked.
9. n. Any of numerous chiefly North American freshwater fishes of the family Catostomidae, having a toothless jaw and a thick-lipped mouth adapted for feeding by suction.
10. n. Zoology An organ or other structure adapted for sucking nourishment or for clinging to objects by suction.
11. n. Botany A secondary shoot produced from the base or roots of a woody plant that gives rise to a new plant.
12. v. To strip suckers or shoots from (plants).
13. v. Informal To trick; dupe: sucker a tourist into a confidence game.
14. v. Botany To send out suckers or shoots.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who or that which sucks; a suckling.
2. n. Specifically— A sucking pig: a commercial term.
3. n. Anew-born or very young whale.
4. n. In ornithology, a bird which sucks or is supposed to do so: only in composition. See goatsucker, honey-sucker.
5. n. In ichthyology, one of numerous fishes which suck in some way or are supposed to do so, having a conformation of the protrusive lips which suggests a sucker, or a sucker-like organ on any part of the body by means of which the fish adheres to foreign objects. Any North American cyprinoid of the family Catostomidæ, as a carp-sucker, chub-sucker, hog-sucker, etc. There are about 60 species, of some 12 or 14 genera, almost confined to the fresh waters of North America, though one or two are Asiatic; they are little esteemed for food, the flesh being insipid and full of small bones. Leading generic forms besides Catostomus are Ictiobus and Bubalichthys, the buffalo-fishes; Carpiodes, the carp-suckers, as C. cyprinus, the quillback or skimback; Cycleptus, as C. elongatus, the black-horse, or gourd-seed sucker; Pantosteus, the hard-headed suckers; Erimyzon, the chub-suckers, as E. sucetta, the sweet sucker; Minytrema, the spotted suckers; Mozostoma, some of whose many species are called mullet, chubmullet, jump-rocks, red-horse, etc.; and Quassilabia, or harelipped suckers. (See the distinctive names, with various cuts.) The typical genus Catostomus is an extensive one, including some of the commonest species, as C. commersoni, the white or brook sucker, 18 inches long, widely distributed from Labrador to Montana and southward to Florida; its section Hypentelium contains H. nigricans, the hog-sucker, hog-molly, or stone-lugger, etc.
6. n. Any fish of the genus Lepadogaster. The Cornish sucker is L. gouani; the Connemara sucker, L. candollei; the bimaculated or network sucker, L. bimaculatus. See cut under Lepadogaster.
7. n. A snail-fish or sea-snail; one of several different members of the family Liparididæ, as the unctuous sucker, Liparis vulgaris. See cuts under snail-fish.
8. n. The lump-sucker or lump-fish. See cut under Cyclopterus.
9. n. The sucking-fish or remora. See cut under Echeneis.
10. n. A cyclostomous fish, as the glutinous hag, Myxine glutinosa. See cut under hag, 3.
11. n. A Californian food-fish, the sciænoid Menticirrus undulatus.
12. n. A suctorial part or organ; a formation of parts by means of which an animal sucks, imbibes, or adheres by atmospheric pressure, as if sucking; a sucking-tube or sucking-disk. The fin of a fish formed into a suctorial disk, as that of the remora. See cuts under Echeneis and Rhombochirus.
13. n. The piston of a suction-pump.
14. n. A pipe or tube through which anything is drawn.
15. n. In botany: A shoot rising from a subterranean creeping stem. Plants which emit suckers freely, as the raspberry and rose, are readily propagated by division.
16. n. A sprout from the root near or at a distance from the trunk, as in the pear and white poplar, or an adventitious shoot from the body or a branch of a tree.
17. n. Same as haustorium. Compare propagulum .
18. n. A small piece of leather to the center of which a string is attached, used by children as a toy. When rendered flexible by wetting and pressed firmly down on a smooth object, as a stone, the adhesion of the two surfaces, due to atmospheric pressure, is so firm that a stone of considerable weight may be lifted by the string.
19. n. A parasite; a sponger; in recent use, also, a stupid person; a dolt.
20. n. A cant name for an inhabitant of Illinois.
21. n. Same as sucket, 1.
22. To strip off suckers or shoots from; deprive of suckers; specifically, to remove superfluous shoots from the root and at the axils of the leaves of (tobacco).
23. To provide with suckers: as, the suckered arms of a cuttlefish.
24. To send out suckers or shoots.
25. n. A lump of hard candy on the end of a stick.

Wiktionary

1. n. A person or thing that sucks.
2. n. An organ or body part that does the sucking.
3. n. Animals such as the octopus and remora, which adhere to other bodies with such organs
4. n. A piece of candy which is sucked; a lollypop.
5. n. horticulture 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.
6. n. UK, colloquial A suction cup
7. n. One who is easily fooled, or gulled.
8. v. To fool someone; to take advantage of someone.
9. n. slang A thing or object. Any thing or object being called attention to with emphasis, as in "this sucker".

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who, or that which, sucks; esp., one of the organs by which certain animals, as the octopus and remora, adhere to other bodies.
2. n. A suckling; a sucking animal.
3. n. The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.
4. n. A pipe through which anything is drawn.
5. n. 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; -- used by children as a plaything.
6. n. (Bot.) A shoot from the roots or lower part of the stem of a plant; -- so called, perhaps, from diverting nourishment from the body of the plant.
7. n. Any one of numerous species of North American fresh-water cyprinoid fishes of the family Catostomidæ; so called because the lips are protrusile. The flesh is coarse, and they are of little value as food. The most common species of the Eastern United States are the northern sucker (Catostomus Commersoni), the white sucker (C. teres), the hog sucker (C. nigricans), and the chub, or sweet sucker (Erimyzon sucetta). Some of the large Western species are called buffalo fish, red horse, black horse, and suckerel.
8. n. The remora.
9. n. The lumpfish.
10. n. The hagfish, or myxine.
11. n. A California food fish (Menticirrus undulatus) closely allied to the kingfish (a); -- called also bagre.
12. n. A parasite; a sponger. See def. 6, above.
13. n. Slang A hard drinker; a soaker.
14. n. Slang, U.S. A greenhorn; someone easily cheated, gulled, or deceived.
15. n. United States A nickname applied to a native of Illinois.
16. n. A person strongly attracted to something; -- usually used with for.
17. n. Slang Any thing or person; -- usually implying annoyance or dislike.
18. v. To strip off the suckers or shoots from; to deprive of suckers.
19. v. To cheat or deceive (a gullible person); to make a sucker of (someone).
20. v. To form suckers.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of
2. n. flesh of any of numerous North American food fishes with toothless jaws
3. n. hard candy on a stick
4. n. a shoot arising from a plant's roots
5. n. mostly North American freshwater fishes with a thick-lipped mouth for feeding by suction; related to carps
6. n. an organ specialized for sucking nourishment or for adhering to objects by suction
7. n. a drinker who sucks (as at a nipple or through a straw)