Also 4–5 souke, 6 Sc. sowk, sulk, 6–7 sucke, 8–9 dial. souk, sook. [f. SUCK v. Cf. SOCK sb.3]
1. a. The action or an act of sucking milk from the breast; the milk or other fluid sucked at one time. At suck, engaged in sucking.
13[?]. S. Gregory (Vernon MS.), 191. Whon heo hedde iȝiue þe child a souke.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, lxxv. 24. My new spanit howffing fra the sowk.
1535. Coverdale, Isa. xxviii. 9. The children, which are weened from suck or taken from the brestes.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), 412. O mother of mine, what a deathfull sucke haue you giuen me?
1851. Mrs. Browning, Casa Guidi Wind., I. 1193. Who loved Rome’s wolf, with demi-gods at suck, Or ere we loved truth’s own divinity.
1912. D. Crawford, Thinking Black, vii. 117. He wants everything, even a literal suck of your blood.
b. The application of suction by the mouth either to an external object (e.g., a wound, a pipe) or internally.
1760. Sterne, in Traill, Sterne, v. (1882), 53. I saw the cut, gave it [sc. my finger] a suck, wrapt it up, and thought no more about it.
1849. Cupples, Green Hand, iii. A rough voice … was chanting the sea-song … in a curious sleepy kind of drone, interrupted every now and then by the suck of his pipe.
1864. Latto, Tam. Bodkin, ii. 12. Toastin’ his taes at a roarin’ peat-fire, an’ takin’ a quiet sook o’ his rusty cutty.
1896. Hardy, Jude, I. vi. She gave … an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her cheeks.
2. A small draught of liquid; a drink, a sup.
1625. Massinger, New Way, I. i. Wellborn. No bouse, nor no tobacco? Tapwell. Not a suck, sir, Nor the remainder of a single can.
1792. Burns, Weary Pund o’ Tow. There sat a bottle in a hole … And ay she took the tither souk, To drouk the stourie tow.
1861. Reade, Cloister & H., I. 27. ’Tis a soupe-au-vin…. Have a suck.
† 3. Milk sucked (or to be sucked) from the breast; mother’s milk, Obs.
1584. Cogan, Haven Health, ccxvii. (1636), 244. To old men, wine is as sucke to young children.
1591. Child-Marriages, 144. If the said John Richardson … doe cause the said Bastard Childe to be sufficiently nursed … and kept, with apparell, Suck, attendinge, and all other necessaries nedfull or belonging to such a childe.
1596. Spenser, State Irel., Wks. (Globe), 638/2. Yong children … drawe unto themselves, togither with theyr sucke, even the nature and disposition of theyr nurses.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 111. Their dam hath no suck for them, til she hath bene six or seauen houres with the male.
1655. Culpepper, etc., Riverius, VI. v. 136. Therefore when Children have it from their Suck, let the Nurse be changed.
† b. fig. Sustenance. Obs.
1584. Cogan, Haven Health (1636), 214. I had rather be without sucke, than that any man, through his intemperate feeding, should have cause to fee mee or feed me.
† 4. Strong drink; tipple. slang. Obs.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Suck, Wine or strong Drink. This is rum Suck, it is excellent Tipple.
5. The drawing of air by suction; occas. a draught or current of air; spec. in Coal-mining, the backward suction of air following an explosion of fire-damp.
1667. Boyle, in Phil. Trans., II. 582. About the seventh suck, it [sc. phosphorescent rotten wood] seemed to grow a little more dim.
1848. Kingsley, Yeast, i. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence by tooth-aches on the north side of all faces.
1880. Leeds Mercury, 13 Sept., 8. The pit took a ‘suck’ again and the air current, such as it was, came right.
6. The sucking action of eddying or swirling water; the sound caused by this; locally, the place at which a body of water moves in such a way as to suck objects into its vortex.
Suck of the ground: see quot. 1893.
c. 1220. Bestiary, 578. Ðe sipes sinken mitte suk, ne cumen he nummor up.
1778. T. Hutchins, Descr. Virginia, 32. About 200 miles above these shoals, is, what is called, the Whirl, or Suck, occasioned, I imagine, by the high mountain, which there confines the River.
1849. Cupples, Green Hand, xviii. By this time we were already in the suck of the channel.
1863. W. Lancaster, Præterita, 41. Its hissing suck of waves.
1878. T. L. Cuyler, Pointed Papers, 112. When the pilot, in steering his ship along the coast of Sicily, finds that she will not obey the helm, he knows that he is within the suck of the whirlpool of Charybdis.
1891. C. Roberts, Adrift Amer., 227. The suck of the water was very strong, and I could feel it pull me back like a strong current.
1893. Leisure Hour, 679. A ship is always faster in deep water than in shallow, owing to what seamen call the suck of the ground, which is only a way of saying that the bulk a ship displaces must be in small proportion to the depth beneath her keel if it is to spread itself readily around her.
1904. W. Churchill, Crossing, II. x. 364. The mighty current … lashed itself into a hundred sucks and whirls.
7. slang. A deception; a disappointing event or result. Also suck-in.
1856. Dow, Serm., II. 376 (Bartlett). A monstrous humbug—a grand suck in.
1872. S. De Vere, Americanisms, 639. Suck in, as a noun and as a verb, is a graphic Western phrase to express deception.
1877. N. W. Linc. Gloss., Suck, Suck-in, an imposition, a disappointment.
8. pl. Sweetmeats. Also collect. sing. colloq.
1858. Hughes, Scour. White Horse, vi. 110. Nuts and apples, and ginger-bread, and all sorts of sucks and food.
1865. Good Words, 125. They sometimes get a ‘knob o’ suck’ (a piece of sweetstuff) on Saturday.
¶ To give suck: see SUCK v. 16.
