Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Sucker   Listen
verb
Sucker  v. t.  (past & past part. suckered; pres. part. suckering)  
1.
To strip off the suckers or shoots from; to deprive of suckers; as, to sucker maize.
2.
To cheat or deceive (a gullible person); to make a sucker of (someone).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Sucker" Quotes from Famous Books



... engine was a clumsy and apparently a very painful process, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of wheezing, sighing, creaking, and bumping. When the pump descended, there was heard a plunge, a heavy sigh, and a loud bump: then, as it rose, and the sucker began to act, there was heard a croak, a wheeze, another bump, and then a strong rush of water as it was lifted and poured out. Where engines of a more powerful and improved description are used, the quantity of water raised is enormous—as much as a million and a half gallons ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... shoots out of the tail of the rapids, and makes for shore. The fish will average three pounds, but individuals are sometimes two and three times that weight. It is shad-shaped, with well-developed scales, easily removed, but has the mouth of the sucker, very small. The flesh is perfectly white and firm, with very few bones. It is boiled by the Indians in pure water, in a peculiar manner, the kettle hung high above a small blaze; and thus cooked, it is eaten with the liquid for a gravy, and is delicate and delicious. If boiled in the ordinary ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... that entrance steep. With her feet foremost, by her arms suspended: When asking if she had the skill to leap, The traitor, with a laugh, his hands extended. And plunged his helpless prey into the deep. "And thus," exclaimed the ruffian, "might I speed With thee each sucker ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... easy on foolish faces. Seein' I ain't deaf I been listenin' to your talk, an' I ain't made up my mind if you're as bright as you're guessin', or if you're the suckers your talk makes you out. Seein' I don't usual take chances, I'll put my dollars on the sucker business. I've stood behind this darned old bar fer ten years, an' I guess for five of 'em I've listened to talk like yours—from fellers like you." He removed the bottle from which the three men had helped themselves to liberal "four fingers," ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... a sucker from the root of a very old family tree, born in poverty, and, with great pinching of father and mother, brothers and sisters, educated for the Church. But from pleasure in scholarship, from archaeological tastes, ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... to the under side, cut a hole through the top of the leather, just large enough to force the end of a strong string through. Before using, soak the leather till it is soft. Next find quite a flat stone or brick, force the sucker to the top with your foot, taking care that there is no turned edge, then you can walk off with that stone, forgetting that it is not the stick of the sucker, but the air pressure—some fifteen pounds to the square inch— that ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... creepiness of it. Casey went into the tent and lighted the candle and proceeded to unlace his high hiking boots. "You come on in and go to bed. Don't yuh pay no attention to that light—that's what the Old Boy plays for first, every time; workin' your curiosity up. You ask anybody. He played me fer a sucker and I told yuh about it, and yuh thought Casey was stringin' yuh. Well, I can take a joke from the devil himself and never let out a yip— but once is enough for Casey! I'm goin' to bed. Let him set ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... thousand dollars? You must think I've been played for a sucker. No, four hundred thousand dollars wouldn't give you a look-in on the pot that I've opened ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... get the corn in, O sweetly, then, thou reams the horn in! Or reekin on a New-year mornin In cog or bicker, An' just a wee drap sp'ritual burn in, An' gusty sucker! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... silent. He seemed to remember his "sailing orders." He muttered something about "playin' me for a sucker," and shut his lips obstinately. Not another word did he utter until they reached Dover. He smoked furiously, gave Royson many a wrathful glance, but bottled up the tumultuous thoughts which troubled him. On board the steamer, however, curiosity conquered prudence. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... sucker, are you? Any feller that couldn't hop the twig offen this old boat ain't much, that's all ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... shoals of delicate chillooahs or poteeahs, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge bhowarree (pike), or ravenous coira, comes to the surface with a splash; there a raho, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it rose; or a pachgutchea, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the stream, and far down in the cool depths ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... "They are not difficult to comprehend, sir. There are numerous growths that are primarily carnivorous. We have the fintal vine on Zenia, which coils instantly when touched, and thus traps many small animals which it wraps about with its folds and digests through sucker-like growths. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... indication that another gigantic prize fight fake will soon make a swipe for the long green of the cibarious sucker. Were it not a violation of the law of the land and the canons of the Baptist church to wager money that we should give to the missionaries, I'd risk six-bits that Corbett and Fitzsimmons get together within a year and that the gamblers who are on the inside ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... broke and hungry at the time. A sneaky little rat named Johnson had bilked Clayton out of his fair share of the Corey payroll job, and Clayton had been forced to get the money somehow. He hadn't mussed the guy up much; besides, it was the sucker's own fault. If he hadn't ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett

... 'atmospheric pressure' are as heathen Greek to him; or because the pump-handle, which alone is directly moved by him, touches, not the water itself, but only the first link in a chain of mechanism connecting it with the water; or because, if the sucker of the pump got choked, or the well were to dry up, it would be vain for him to go on moving the pump-handle. Blockhead as he is, nothing of all this in the least diminishes his conviction that as long as the pump continues in order and there remains water in the well, he can oblige ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... were killed to ground level. All of the damaged plants have survived, and where the top of the tree was killed, new growth came up from the root. As only seedling Persian walnut trees were under observation and included in the Purdue plantation, their sucker growth will be used ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... great event of the day was the event of the special over the Galena roar, of sixteen cars and more than a thousand pairs of sovereign lungs. With military precision they repaired to the Brewster House, and ahead of then a banner was flung: "Winnebago County for the Tall Sucker." And the Tall Sucker was on the steps to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... sheriff. "That's part of his stock in trade; it's pulled many a sucker. He's got a mighty convincing way about him, believe me! He can tell the damnedest bunch of lies, looking you straight in the eyes all the time, till you'd swear everything he said was gospel. But his big specialty is egging somebody else on to do the dirty work, and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... make a sucker out of history," I says to Wurpz. "And wait until we show this creep to Professor ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... declared. "You remember about Scylla and Charybdis, the two fabled monsters that used to alarm the old chaps hundreds and hundreds of years ago; but which turned out to be a dangerous rock and a big sucker hole, called a whirlpool? That's what ails this old inlet, I guess. The currents suck hard; and these crackers along the coast think unseen hands are trying to drag ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... would say, old sucker of wine-skins, that he will attain the double advantage of always keeping her to himself, and always keeping her warm,' interrupted Colias, a ruddy, reckless boy of sixteen, privileged to be impertinent in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... enough—'I've knowed good judges of hosses to make a hones' mistake now an' then, an' sell a hoss to a customer with the heaves thinkin' he's a stump-sucker. But it 'ud turn out to be only the heaves ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes with branches of trees tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds which are heard in the still summer evenings and which the ignorance of the white people considers as the screams of the goat-sucker are really, according to my informant, the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but just such a Simeon you will never think up. So diverse and motley is life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother imaginable. She has one daughter—Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how much tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... investment brokers in New York and Chicago promptly added a new name to what vulgarly they called their "sucker" lists. Dealers in mining stocks, in oil stocks, in all kinds of attractive stocks, showed interest; in circular form samples of the most optimistic and alluring literature the world has ever known were consigned to the post, addressed to Mr. P. F. O'Day, such-and-such a town, such-and-such ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... much more interesting to them. For a bit it was harder to keep them out of the water than it had been to get them into it. They had their first lessons in fishing. And though they were too clumsy at first to catch even a slow, mud-grubbing sucker, they found the attempt most interesting. The stream just opposite their home was deep and quiet, but a little way below, the current ran strong; and once, having ridden down it gaily for a couple of hundred yards, they found themselves ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the elevator boy? I gave the elevator boy in Dresden two marks and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that I played the sucker." ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... the Chief Justice stated in court that this was only fair and right; the white man had paid for the damage done by his pigs, and therefore he was entitled to claim damages if the village pigs caused him trouble. (I had previously squared his Honour with the promise of a male sucker.) One day the seven young pigs escaped from their mother and went out for a run on the village green. They were at once assailed as detestable foreign devils by about two hundred and forty-three gaunt, razorbacked ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... sell for so and so many millions." Nothing is kept back from this head panderer and procurer, for it would be useless to attempt to deceive him, and, to quote his always picturesque language: "Never send a sucker to fish for suckers or he'll lose your bait, so spread out your bricks and I'll get the 'gang' to polish up their gildings." After the quality and amount the "System" intends to work off in exchange for the people's savings are explained, that part of the plunder which is to come to the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... produced the beneficial results), cutting a slit in the bark of the limbs and trunk for "bark bound" so called, etc., all of which have stimulating effects with more or less permanent injury to the tree. Who knows but what the sap sucker, with his ability to dig into the bark and extract a piece of cambium, was not sent to us to aid in preserving our trees by stimulating ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... now, Red," he stated. "Haydon didn't hesitate none. He's a sneakin', schemin' devil, an' he hates me like poison. But he took me in, reckonin' to play me for a sucker. Looks like things might be interestin'." He grinned. "I'm yearnin' ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... sucker, all right," said Dink ruefully. Then he stopped and blurted out: "Say, White, I guess it was about what I needed. I guess I'm not such a little wonder-worker, after all. I've been fresh—rotten fresh. But, say, from now on I'm holding my ear to the ground; and when it comes to humbly picking ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... spun yarn, and turned adrift. An immense striped shark, apparently about fourteen feet in length, which had been cruising about the ship all the morning, sailed slowly up, and, turning slightly on one side, attempted to seize the apparently helpless fish, but the sucker, with great dexterity, made himself fast in a moment to the shark's back—off darted the monster at full speed—the sucker holding on fast as a limpet to a rock, and the billet towing astern. He then rolled over and over, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... truck when you like; I've no use for goods like that," he said. "Next time you pack me a dud lot I'll cut out your account. If you and the sporting guy who's sitting on your counter thought me a sucker, I ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... communicate about the goat-sucker is very curious. About the difference in the power of flight in Dorkings, etc., may it not be due merely to greater weight of body ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... been a blood-sucker of many a Christian's blood, and now thou shalt know what thou hast deserved ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... has two small long jointed feelers, or rather smellers, MM, which have four joints, and are hairy, like those of several other creatures; between these, it has a small proboscis, or probe, NNO, that seems to consist of a tube NN, and a tongue or sucker O, which I have perceiv'd him to slip in and out. Besides these, it has also two chaps or biters PP, which are somewhat like those of an Ant, but I could not perceive them tooth'd; these were shap'd very like the blades of a pair of round top'd Scizers, and were opened and shut just after the same ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... to be around once when you talk to a bad one,' says the guy. 'Now look a-here,' he says. 'I'll buy this horse, but get over all thoughts of makin' a sucker out of me. What do you want for him? If you try to stick me up—I'm gone. The woods is full of this kind. Let's ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... sucking on trank, watching Telly, and living on the pittance income from the unalienable stock shares issued her at birth. But let's get to this religious curd. Son, whatever con man first thought up the idea of gods put practically the whole human race on the sucker list. You say they're giving you comparative religion in your classes at the Temple now, eh? O.K., have you ever heard of a major religion where the priests didn't ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... beggin' old sucker," flared the president, "but I've had enterprise enough and interest in this fair enough to get Mr. Bickford to promise us a present of a new exhibition hall, and it's only right to extend some ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... soldier produced from an inner pocket and offered one of those childhood sweets known as an "all day sucker." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... the animal, the tick becomes a blood sucker, and at certain seasons animals running wild over unbroken camps, become literally covered with these bichos; consequently the cattle fall back in condition, and the mortality amongst them mounts up to an appallingly large percentage. To obviate this the dip ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... says that he once asked the manager of a circus which group of his employees he had most trouble keeping. Quite unexpectedly the man replied, "The attendants. They get 'sucker-sore' and after that they are no good." This is how it happens. The wild man from Borneo is placed in a cage with a placard attached bearing in big letters the legend "The Wild Man from Borneo." An old farmer comes to the circus, looks ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... pulled it off. Now he's got a sure line on the Black, an' he'll make such a killin' that the books'll remember him for many a day. But why does he keep throwin' that fairy tale into me about buyin' a bad horse to oblige somebody? A man would be a sucker to believe that of Crane; he's not the sort. But one sure thing, he said he'd look after me, an' he will. He'd break a man quick enough, but when he gives his word it stands. Mr. Jakey Faust can look after himself: I'm not goin' to take chances of losin' ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... other cuss had played the tricks he dared ter play, The daisies would be bloomin' over his remains to-day; But somehow folks respected him and stood him to the last, Considerin' his superior connections in the past. So, when he bilked at poker, not a sucker drew a gun On the man who 'd worked with Dana ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... penny," he muttered to himself. "If I couldn't get ten pounds for him, just like that, with a thank-you-ma'am, I'm a sucker that don't know a terrier from a greyhound.—Sure, ten pounds, in ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... say," she returned. "It is the goat-sucker, you know; they are very fond of feeding on that sort of beetle called the gnat-chafer; in fact, it is their favourite food. It ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... "Howdys" and hand shakes. The Captain, puckering up his funny little mouth, not unlike that of a sucker fish, addressing himself ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... can hardly be so much alive—or so irritable—as the muscle cells; nor these as intensely alive as the nerve and brain cells. Does not a bird possess a higher degree of life than a mollusk, or a turtle? Is not a brook trout more alive than a mud-sucker? You can freeze the latter as stiff as an icicle and resuscitate it, but not the former. There is a scale of degrees in life as clearly as there is a scale of degrees in temperature. There is an endless gradation of sensibilities of the living cells, dependent ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... mouth to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth. An egg-shell is placed on the ground alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of the sucker. A straw guides the water into the hole of the vessel, as she draws mouthful after mouthful from below. The water is made to pass along the outside, not through the straw. If any one will attempt to squirt water ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... 1235 Wave-land Ave., Chicago; the second at the home of Mrs. Emma Schmid, 4710 Winthrop Ave., Chicago. To the second meeting they invited C.O. Anderson of 601 Diversey Parkway, Chicago. He was listed by the Nazis and the White Russians as a good sucker because he ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... wanted any when I leave Uganda, to show my friends, she would give me twenty more sticks of that sort if I liked them; and, turning from verbal to practical jocularity, the dirty fellow took my common sucker out of the pot, inserted one of the queen's, and sucked at it himself, when I ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... pea-hen for the haill night, behoves just to hae hadden her tongue when her clavers might have dune some gude! But it's aye the way wi' women; if they ever hand their tongues ava', ye may swear it's for mischief. I wish I could set her on again without this blood-sucker kenning what I am doing. But he's as gleg as MacKeachan's elshin,* that ran through sax plies of bendleather and half-an-inch ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... play play I," said Steve aggrievedly. "I stole just one measly horse and every one's called me a horse-thief ever since. But I've played poker, lo! these many years, and no one ever called me a gambler once. The best I get is, 'Clear out, you blamed sucker. Come back when you grow a new fleece!' and when I get home the wind moans down the chimney, 'O-o-o-gh-h! wha-a-t have you do-o-one with your ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... would be much lessened were there free ventilation under the coffee trees. And, taking all these points into consideration, I am now letting up all my short topped trees, which is easily done by letting a sucker grow from the head of the tree, and topping it when it reaches the required height. In places which are exposed, or fairly exposed, to wind, short topping would not be attended with such disadvantages, as in ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... no ghost, Frank, but a jolly little honey-sucker, with a wee wife, and children no bigger than peas, but yet solid greedy ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Looey. "We'd be all right and have our horses and wagon now if you'd only stuck to business and not got us into that poker game. Talk about suckers! Doc, for a man that has skinned as many of 'em as you have, you're the worst sucker yourself ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... surprise of his companion. An example of one of its perils, settling in the mud, occurred, I think, in the port of New York. A party of amateurs, supported by champagne flasks and a reporter, went down. The bell settled and stuck like a boy's sucker. One of the party proposed shaking or rocking the bell, and doing so, the water was forced under and the bell ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a trick like that," was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even with the most hearty wish to bring about my downfall, ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... out no sound. Wainwright seemed gradually stooping nearer, nearer, with a large soft hand about his throat, and his little pig eyes gleaming like two points of green light, his selfish mouth all pursed up as it used to be when the fellows stole his all-day sucker, and held it tantalizingly above his reach. One of his large cushiony knees was upon Cameron's chest now, and the breath was going from him. He gasped, and tried to shout to the other fellows that this was the time to do away with this tyrant, this captain's ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... called a game, but the use of the sucker is so familiar to most boys that a description of it is surely not out of place in this chapter. A piece of sole leather is used, three or four inches square. It is cut into a circle and the edges carefully pared thin. A hole is made in the centre and a piece of string ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... mosquito or horse fly. But the structure of the tongue itself (labium, l) is most curious. When the fly settles upon a lump of sugar or other sweet object, it unbends its tongue, extends it, and the broad knob-like end divides into two broad, flat, muscular leaves (l), which thus present a sucker-like surface, with which the fly laps up liquid sweets. These two leaves are supported upon a framework of tracheal tubes. In the cut given above, Mr. Emerton has faithfully represented these modified trachae, which end in hairs projecting externally. Thus the inside ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... your property is squandered, your health and spirits broken, and you have six small children, besides yourself and your husband's mother to support! After five years of incessant toil in humility and degradation, why should not your lord and master intrude his loathsome person, like a blood-sucker upon your vitals, never offering you any assistance; and should your precarious life be protracted to that extent of time, for twenty dollars you can buy a divorce from bed and board, and have your property secured to you. Such, Madam, is your ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... went to the square, where many of the town's inhabitants were gathered, all faces tilted to watch the storm. Judge Thayer was there, glorifying in the success of his undertaking, sparing none of those who had mocked him for a sucker and a fool. A cool breath of reviving wind was moving, fresh, sweet, rain-scented; as hopeful, as life-giving, as a reprieve to one chained among faggots at the stake ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... out Mosquitoes and Bats:—If a bottle of the oil of pennyroyal is left uncorked in a room at night, not a mosquito, nor any other blood-sucker, will be found there in the morning. Mix potash with powdered meal, and throw it into the rat-holes of a cellar, and the rats will depart. If a rat or a mouse get into your pantry, stuff into its hole a rag saturated with a ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... this deep pool up in the mountains. There is a kind of black sucker live there but no Indians ever caught them because that was a Water Baby place and they was Water Baby food. Womens used to sit on a platform of logs and weave baskets there [special baskets for the Water Babies, apparently, such as the one used as offering in the story above]. One time ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... hair-like foot is protruded from each, at the pleasure of the owner. When disposed to change its situation, it stretches forth those on the side towards which it would go, fixes them by means of the sucker at the tip of each, and, simultaneously withdrawing those in the rear, pulls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... is a feller who gives big sums of moneys to orphan-asylums, hospitals, and colleges, and if he could afford it he's a philantropist, Mawruss, and if he couldn't, then he's a sucker, and that is what is called a philantropist," Abe said, "which, if I didn't know what it meant, Mawruss, I ain't such an ignorant idealist that I would use such a word in front of you and expect you not to try to ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... or various shades of orange, and red. This variation in color probably depends somewhat on their age or food—the red ones are generally supposed to be the most mature. The head is furnished with a pair of pointed mandibles, between which is a pointed beak or sucker (Fig. 2). The legs are eight in number; the two front pairs project forward and the other two backward; they are covered with long stiff hairs; the extremities of the feet are provided with long bent hairs, which are each terminated by a knob. The legs and feet appear to be only used in drawing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as "Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his debut as "Guant Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde

... was about fifty years old, but was still in a growing state and in vigorous health. The oldest tree existing in France at the time of the publication of Loudon's great work, was one in the Jardin des Plantes, which in 1831 was about 60 feet high. It was planted in 1786 (when a sucker of four years old), about the same time as the limes which form the grand avenue called the Allee de Buffon. "There is, however, a much larger Zelkowa on an estate of M. le Comte de Dijon, an enthusiastic planter of exotic trees, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... Depose me: if thou do'st it halfe so grauely, so maiestically, both in word and matter, hang me vp by the heeles for a Rabbet-sucker, or a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... much sleep the night before. Well, he'd sleep tonight. Worrying wasn't going to help matters. What if they did come? Let them come. Fill up the street and begin their damn shooting. They didn't think Lucky Tommy was sucker enough to let them march him up on a scaffold and break his neck on the end of a rope. Fat chance. Not him. That sort of stuff happened to other guys, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... come (Yes, thine and mine) a second time to light, And then that he upon the hearth stood up, And took the sceptre which he bore of old, Which now Aegisthus bears, and fixed it there, And from it sprang a sucker fresh and strong, And all Mycenae rested in its shade. This tale I heard from some one who was near When she declared her vision to the Sun; But more than this I heard not, save that she Now sends me hither through ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... day sucker?" asked Kent, who, in spite of the fact that he owned a second-hand bicycle, was not ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... is a blood-sucker; irritates the skin and sometimes causes sores to form on the body of the chick. The birds grow stupid and weak and die rapidly if not properly treated. Older fowls withstand the irritation of mites much longer, but do not thrive, or lay regularly, ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... motionless and tightly pressed between the base of the tail and the surface of support, so that any movement of them was impossible. The question arose, however, whether the tail and these flaps acted as a sucker which aided in the adhesion. The flaps were therefore cut off with scissors—an operation which caused practically no pain or injury to the fish—and it adhered afterwards quite as well as when the fin-flaps were intact. The subcaudal prolongations of the fins are ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... "I was just getting a bit anxious about you. I thought sure that fairy had you in tow for a sucker. I'm going to stay right with you, and you're not going to shake ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... was a high-class place," he explained. "I made sure of that before I came in. In a place that was second or third class there might be people who'd think they'd caught a 'sucker' that would take anything that was unloaded on to him, because he didn't know. The things are for Miss Temple Barholm, and she DOES know. I shall ask her to come here herself to-morrow morning, and I want you to take care of her, and show her the best you've got that's suitable." ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... armour. We took six. Attached to the breast of one was a remora, or "sucking fish." The length of this animal is from six to eight inches—colour blackish—body, scaleless and oily—head rather flat, on the back of which is the sucker, which consists of a narrow oval-shaped margin with several transverse projections, and ten curved rays extending towards the centre, but not meeting. The Indians of Jamaica and Cuba employed this fish as falconers do hawks. In calm ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulterer's hare. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... it was safe he emerged, though, and eagerly stood looking on as Dick and his father examined the curious creatures, which looked like soft bags, with so many sucker-covered arms hanging out all ready to seize upon the first hapless fish that came their way, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... pointed to the post office and the army and the navy, as examples of how the State could run things. Wasn't that all right? demanded Jennie. And Peter said Yes, that was all right; but hidden back in Peter's soul all the time was a whisper that it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. There was a sucker born every minute, and you might be sure that no matter how they fixed it up, there would always be some that would find it easy to live off the rest. This poor kid, for example, who was ready to throw herself away for any fool notion, or for anybody that came along and told her a hard-luck story—would ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... is a fool!" burst out Dusty Rhodes spitefully, "and more than that, he's a crook! Now that is what he done—he covered up that find and went back to the man that had grubstaked him. But this banker was no sucker, if he did have the name of staking every bum in Nevada. He was generous with his men and he give 'em all they asked for, but before he planked down a dollar he made 'em sign a contract that a corporation lawyer couldn't break. Well, when Wunpost said he'd quit, Mr. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... Buzzard,' sezee. 'I lef' you yer fer ter watch dish yere hole, en I lef' Brer Rabbit in dar. I comes back en I fines you at de 'ole en Brer Rabbit ain't in dar,' sezee. 'I'm gwineter make you pay fer't. I done bin tampered wid twel plum' down ter de sap sucker'll set on a log en sassy me. I'm gwineter fling you in a bresh-heap ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... follows. Seeds are scattered indiscriminately by winds, brought by waters, and dropped by birds. They perish, or produce, according as the soil and situation upon which they fall are suited to them: and under the same dependence, the seedling or the sucker, if not cropped by animals, (which Nature is often careful to prevent by fencing it about with brambles or other prickly shrubs) thrives, and the tree grows, sometimes single, taking its own shape without constraint, but for the most part compelled to conform ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... are well stocked with fish, of which the ttart, banane, loche, and dormeur are the principal varieties. The ttart (best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to the height of 2500 and even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic sucker, which enables them to cling to rocks. Under stones in the lower basins crawfish of the most extraordinary size are taken; some will measure thirty-six inches from claw to tail. And at all the river-mouths, during July and August, are caught vast numbers of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... villain," said Jerry Swinger, who, in the struggle, had got his antagonist under him, and had drawn from his pocket a long clasp-knife, "if you stir an inch, I'll put this blood-sucker through your shrivelled-up gizzard!" ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... the messengers of the Admiralty with sailing orders; but I told him as how I could slip my cable without his direction or assistance, and so he hauled off in dudgeon. This cursed hiccup makes such a rippling in the current of my speech, that mayhap you don't understand what I say. Now, while the sucker of my wind-pump will go, I would willingly mention a few things, which I hope you will set down in the log-book of your remembrance, when I am stiff, d'ye see. There's your aunt sitting whimpering by the fire; I desire you will keep her tight, warm, and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe—you ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... my friend!" The pale little eyes were glowing, malevolently red. "You've played me for a sucker long enough. You towed me along out into this cursed West of yours, making me think all the time that when you got ready to call on your father he'd come through like a flash. And you knew that he had turned ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... progress, wished to give her the same profession as her husband—a machinist. But she declared that her only profession was that of a "married woman," and she was so inscribed. Her peevish boy rejoiced in the title of "pleuricheur," or "weeper," and the infant as "titeuse," or "sucker." While this was going on, the guardiano of our room came in very mysteriously, and beckoned to my companion, saying that "Mademoiselle was at the gate." But it was the Italian who was wanted, and again, from the little window of our pavilion, we watched his hurried ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... In Kentucky, They spot a sucker quickest In Kentucky. They'll set up to a drink, Get your money 'fore you think, And you get ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... turned sharply. "I'll tell you why he's going, Bill, and you can bet your last cent I'm right. Lablache is at the bottom of it. He's at the bottom of everything that causes people to leave Foss River. He's a blood-sucker." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... One sucker crept beneath the gate, One seed was wafted o'er the wall, One bough sustained his trembling weight; These ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... can sell quite a few of them at a long price, but the game has its limits. Now, let this man secure a truly high grade article from reliable producers, teach his customers the points that actually distinguish his eggs from common stock, and he can get not only the sucker trade above referred to but a more satisfactory and permanent trade from that class of people who are willing to pay for genuine superiority but whose ears have not ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... ought not to have permitted Flannelly to have anything to do with Ballycloran, after building it; but himself he never blamed; people never do; it is so much easier to blame others,—and so much more comfortable. Mr. Macdermot thus regarded his creditor as a vulgar, low-born blood-sucker, who, having by chicanery obtained an unwarrantable hold over him, was determined, if possible, to crush him. The builder, on the other hand, who had spent a long life of constant industry, but doubtful honesty, in scraping up a decent fortune, looked ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... of the river, where the current is rapid, and the bottom pebbly, you may sometimes see the curious circular nests of the Lamprey Eel, Petromyzon Americanus, the American Stone-Sucker, as large as a cart-wheel, a foot or two in height, and sometimes rising half a foot above the surface of the water. They collect these stones, of the size of a hen's egg, with their mouths, as their name implies, and are said to fashion them into circles with ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... lak dory, an' some lak bass, An' plaintee dey mus' have trout— An' w'ite feesh too, dere 's quite a few Not satisfy do widout— Very fon' of sucker some folk is, too, But for me, you can go an' cut De w'ole of dem t'roo w'at you call menu, So long as I get barbotte— Ho! Ho! for me it ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond

... among such fraudulent operators, but new victims continually are found. The "sucker list" of one firm in Wall Street numbers 110,000 names, selected as those of persons who will bite more than once at a mining scheme, and whose records show that they have so bitten. This operator proudly declares that the only way a sucker can get his ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... be that he would have, but I'm still inclined to believe That he weakened o'er the billiards that he found up Anson's sleeve. For I've noticed that the "sucker," or the chap you're thinking one, Proves the "shark" that gets the money, "doing" 'stead ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... meandering channels that spread and divaricate and spend their burden of mud and silt within the thunderbelt of Atlantic surf, of the dense tangled vegetation that creeps into the shimmering water with root and sucker. He gave a sense of heat and a perpetual reek of vegetable decay, and told how at last comes a break among these things, an arena fringed with bone-white dead trees, a sight of the hard-blue sea line beyond the dazzling surf and a wide desolation of dirty shingle ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... Chiton grows five inches long, and is found in Chili, often in very exposed places, fixed to wave-beaten rocks. The soft part of all the Chitons, that is, you know, the animal when alive, is furnished with a sucker on the under part, by which it sticks ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown

... does not incontinently kill her prey with her delicate bite; she poisons it so as to produce a gradual weakness, which gives the blood-sucker ample time to drain her victim, without the least risk, before the rigor mortis ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... gasped. I had never taken myself for a "sucker" before, and even in such good company as that of my husband it gave me a jar to hear ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... general, not to be nibbling like a sucker with a sore mouth, with a person of your liberality, I shall give you a plain history of my adventures, in the way of experiences, that you may judge for yourself. I was born an Episcopalian, if one can say so, but ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... friend, but those big fish, one of which you risked your precious life after, are—suckers. Ben Toner wanted to fire them into the drink, but I restrained his sucker-cidal hand. You seem to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... fortune in it. 'Buy a wonderful Water Buffalo Ranch and Get Rich Quick. He Lives on Water. Have We Got Lots of it? Ask Us!'—How does that hit you for advertising matter?—Form a stock corporation; get a picture of a Philippine buffalo; and sell stock for all the money a sucker's got. Of course there aren't any water buffalos here; but neither is there any land; and that doesn't keep them from selling ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... of importance. "Gabriel Grimsby," he said to himself, "you hold the trump-card all right this time. You may be of no account, but you know a thing or two, and it's up to you to make the most of your knowledge. But, hello! here comes the sucker." ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... in the wilds of Callikoon, abounds in a peculiar species of white sucker, which is of excellent quality. It is taken only in spring, during the spawning season, at the time "when the leaves are as big as a chipmunk's ears." The fish run up the small streams and inlets, beginning at nightfall, and continuing till the channel is literally packed with them, and ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... herself, and highly resentful of the fact, Sandra tried again. "But don't you see, Jarve, that she's just simply playing you for a sucker? Pulling the strings and watching ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... line out and baited up and began to troll at the end of the boat. In a few minutes he got a bite and pulled up a fair-sized perch. A sunfish followed, then a sucker, and then ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... littoral. marshal, martial. minor, miner. manor, manner. medal, meddle. metal, mettle. missal, missel (thrush). orphan, often. putty, puttee. pedal, peddle. police, pelisse. principal, principle. profit, prophet. rigour, rigger. rancour, ranker. succour, sucker. sailor, sailer. cellar, seller. censor, censer. surplus, surplice. symbol, cymbal. skip, skep. tuber, tuba. whirl, whorl. wert, wort (herb, obs.). vial, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... upon the two boys. It was hard to say which of them came in for the largest share of it. Even before they moved their boat the first time they could count three bull-heads, six perch, twice as many sunfish, or "pumpkin-seed," two shiners, and a sucker. To be sure, none of them were very large fish, but they were all big enough to eat, and would count when they came to compare with the contents of the fat ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... depended, pro tem, on proving that he was a sucker from the great bough of the Fontaines of Melton; and why? Because, this effected, he had only to go along that bough by an established pedigree to the great trunk of the Funteyns of Salle, and the first Funteyn of Salle was said to be (and this he hoped to prove true) great-grandson ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... or honeysuckle, but devoid of all fragrance. The leaves are succulent, full of moisture, in shape a long oval, the longest not more than an inch and a quarter. This parasite also fastens itself on other trees, and often kills the branches from which it draws its strength—a real sap-sucker. The karembo frequently dies ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... said Nimbus, as he broke a sucker into short pieces between his thumb and finger, "yer's got ter hab de sile; but ther's a heap mo' jes ez good terbacker lan' ez dis, ef people only hed the patience ter wuk it ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... trees which bear evidence of their industry, skill and providence. The huge crow-like pileolated woodpecker with its scarlet crest, the red-shafted flicker, the Sierra creeper, the red-breasted sap-sucker, Williamson's sap-sucker, the white-headed woodpecker, Cabanis's woodpecker with spotted wings and gray breast, the most common of woodpeckers, and Lewis's woodpecker, a large heavy bird, glossy black above, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... with which it is propagated, render it at once the most useful of trees, and the greatest possible incentive to indolence. In less than one year after it is planted the fruit may be gathered and the proprietor has but to cut away the old stems and leave a sucker, which will produce fruit three months after. There are different sorts of bananas, and they are used in different ways; fresh, dried, fried, etc. The dried plantain, a great branch of trade in Michoacn, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naive indulgence of long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the rolling eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking his lips over an all-day sucker. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... is put together in very fine enigmatical style, as elegant as it is clear: "When the eagle-tanner with the hooked claws shall seize a stupid dragon, a blood-sucker, it will be an end to the hot Paphlagonian pickled garlic. The god grants great glory to the sausage-sellers unless they ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... Hank," Bill's voice was modified and conciliatory. "I ain't callin' you a sucker, and I ain't sayin' you'll peach. What's the use of us fellers fightin' about it? We're in this together and we're pardners. We've got to hang together. What's the use ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... sea the creature turns its eight arms down, and walks like a huge submarine spider, thrusting its arms into the crevices of the rocks, and extracting thence the luckless crab that had thought itself secure from so bulky a foe. Each of the arms is covered with what are called suckers. Each sucker consists of a little round horny ridge, forming a little cup, which is attached to the arm by a stem. When the arm is pressed upon an object, the effort to escape from the grasp of the arm causes a suction which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... anarchism is ridiculous, you dredge up an opinion that it's man's highest ethic. You must laugh yourself to sleep at nights. You and Metaxa and Jakes and every other agent in Section G. Everybody is in on the Tog gag but the sucker." ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... had seen some of the preliminary tests, he had subconsciously put capitals to the words. But Richard Thorn was no fool. Too many men had been suckered before, and he, Richard Thorn, did not intend to be another sucker, no matter how impressed he might be by the ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

... front of a side-show tryin' to drum up a crowd to see a passel o' freaks on the inside. Tobe had the fust item led out fer inspection—a bony hoss that tried to lie down, an' Alf spoke up an' wanted to know if he was a stump-sucker. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben



Words linked to "Sucker" :   lollipop, freshwater fish, hog molly, candy, patsy, fool, family Catostomidae, buffalo fish, drinker, dupe, soft touch, buffalofish, confect, chump, mark, mug, victim, redhorse, all-day sucker, catostomid, hog sucker, fall guy, organ, whale sucker, cupule, suck, Catostomidae, gull, Hypentelium nigricans, sucker punch, shoot



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com