Other forms: sucked, sucking, sucks
To suck is to pull liquid into the mouth by drawing in the breath. Suck through a straw, suck a sweet, the pump sucks.
It works by lowering the pressure so that outside air pushes the liquid up, which is why drinking through a straw is impossible in a vacuum. Babies suck by instinct from birth. In informal American use, to suck means to be bad. Note suction, and that the word is very old.
1verbsuckTo pull liquid into the mouth by drawing in the breath.
“He cut a small hole in the top of the orange and sucked the juice out.”
suck is a drawing in.
Old English sucan comes from a Proto-Indo-European root imitating the action. Suckle and soak are relatives.
Middle English
souken
English, today
suck
Built from
From Middle English souken. From Middle English souken, suken, from Old English sūcan (“to suck”), from Proto-West Germanic sūkan, from Proto-Germanic sūkaną (“to suck, suckle”), from Proto-Indo-European sewg-, sewk- (“to suck”). Cognate with Scots souke (“to suck”), obsolete Dutch zuiken (“to suck”), li zuken, zoeken (“to suck”). Akin also to Old English sūgan (“to suck”), West Frisian sûge, sûge (“to suck”), Dutch zuigen (“to suck”), German - saugen (“to suck”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål suge (“to suck”), Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish suga (“to suck”), Icelandic sjúga (“to suck”), Latin sūgō (“suck”), Welsh sugno (“suck”). Related to soak.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA