Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One that sucks, especially an unweaned domestic animal.
  • noun One who is easily deceived; a dupe.
  • noun One that is indiscriminately attracted to something specified.
  • noun An unspecified thing. Used as a generalized term of reference, often as an intensive.
  • noun A person. Used as a generalized term of reference, often as an intensive.
  • noun A lollipop.
  • noun A piston or piston valve, as in a suction pump or syringe.
  • noun A tube or pipe, such as a siphon, through which something is sucked.
  • noun Any of numerous freshwater fishes of the family Catostomidae of North America and East Asia, having a thick-lipped mouth used for feeding by suction.
  • noun Zoology An organ or other structure adapted for sucking nourishment or for clinging to objects by suction.
  • noun Botany A secondary shoot produced from the base or roots of a woody plant that gives rise to a new plant.
  • intransitive verb To strip suckers or shoots from (plants).
  • intransitive verb Informal To trick; dupe.
  • intransitive verb To send out suckers or shoots.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which sucks; a suckling.
  • noun Specifically— A sucking pig: a commercial term.
  • noun Anew-born or very young whale.
  • noun In ornithology, a bird which sucks or is supposed to do so: only in composition. See goatsucker, honey-sucker.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun The lump-sucker or lump-fish. See cut under Cyclopterus.
  • noun The sucking-fish or remora. See cut under Echeneis.
  • noun A cyclostomous fish, as the glutinous hag, Myxine glutinosa. See cut under hag, 3.
  • noun A Californian food-fish, the sciænoid Menticirrus undulatus.
  • noun 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.
  • noun The piston of a suction-pump.
  • noun A pipe or tube through which anything is drawn.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun Same as haustorium. Compare propagulum .
  • noun A small piece of leather to the center of which a string is attached, used by children as a toy.
  • noun A parasite; a sponger; in recent use, also, a stupid person; a dolt.
  • noun A cant name for an inhabitant of Illinois.
  • noun Same as sucket, 1.
  • noun A lump of hard candy on the end of a stick.
  • 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).
  • To provide with suckers: as, the suckered arms of a cuttlefish.
  • To send out suckers or shoots.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To form suckers.
  • noun One who, or that which, sucks; esp., one of the organs by which certain animals, as the octopus and remora, adhere to other bodies.
  • noun A suckling; a sucking animal.
  • noun The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.
  • noun A pipe through which anything is drawn.
  • noun 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.
  • noun (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.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly from the Pig in a poke scam, where victims were tricked into believing they were buying a young (that is a suckling) pig. Also possibly from suckener.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly from German Sache (thing).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the verb suck.

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Examples

  • If any of those poor romantic fools would have driven hours north to the Hopi reservation and doubled back, the word sucker fizzing like acid in their bellies as they sneaked glances across the car at the woman they loved, knowing she was going home to another man.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • If any of those poor romantic fools would have driven hours north to the Hopi reservation and doubled back, the word sucker fizzing like acid in their bellies as they sneaked glances across the car at the woman they loved, knowing she was going home to another man.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • If any of those poor romantic fools would have driven hours north to the Hopi reservation and doubled back, the word sucker fizzing like acid in their bellies as they sneaked glances across the car at the woman they loved, knowing she was going home to another man.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

  • This sucker is about the strongest thing we can build out of wood, and most cost effective structure known to man.

    Page 2 2003

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