sucker
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sucker", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "sucker" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "sucker" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sucker is aEnglishnoun. It means: A person or animal that sucks, especially a breast or udder; especially a suckling animal, young mammal before it is weaned. Pronounced /ˈsʌk.ə/. Often confused with super and sucks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sucker |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsʌk.ə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #13,248 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sucker is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsʌk.ə/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,248 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for sucker, with forms such as "scuker", "ssucker", and "succker". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "super", "sucks", "sucky", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English souker, sokere, sukkere, soukere, equivalent to suck (verb) + -er. Compare Saterland Frisian Suuger, West Frisian sûker (“sucker”), Dutch zuiger (“sucker”), German Sauger (“dummy; vacuum”). Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is sucker, spelled S-U-C-K-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A person or animal that sucks, especially a breast or udder; especially a suckling animal, young mammal before it is weaned.
- 2An 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.
- 3A parasite; a sponger.
- 4An organ or body part that does the sucking; especially a round structure on the bodies of some insects, frogs, and octopuses that allows them to stick to surfaces.
- 5A thing that works by sucking something.
- 6The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.
- 7A pipe through which anything is drawn.
- 8A 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; formerly used by children as a plaything.
- 9A suction cup.
- 10An animal such as the octopus and remora, which adhere to other bodies with such organs.
- 11Any fish in the family Catostomidae of North America and eastern Asia, which have mouths modified into downward-pointing, suckerlike structures for feeding in bottom sediments.
- 12A lollipop; a piece of candy which is sucked.
- 13A hard drinker.
- 14An inhabitant of Illinois.
- 15A migrant lead miner working in the Driftless Area of northwest Illinois, southwest Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa, working in summer and leaving for winter, so named because of the similarity to the migratory patterns of the North American Catostomidae.
- 16A person who is easily deceived, tricked or persuaded to do something; a naive or gullible person.
- 17A person irresistibly attracted by something specified.
- 18The penis.
Etymology
From Middle English souker, sokere, sukkere, soukere, equivalent to suck (verb) + -er. Compare Saterland Frisian Suuger, West Frisian sûker (“sucker”), Dutch zuiger (“sucker”), German Sauger (“dummy; vacuum”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: scuker,ssucker,succker,sucekr,suckerr,suckker,suckre,sukcer,uscker
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sucker
Misspelling Variants of "sucker"
Frequency rank: #13,248 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: