(This posting is mostly about sexual acts, mostly discussed in street language, so it’s entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest; I know, I know, that sucks)
Yesterday’s posting “Bill, it is the scribbling of a gigantic scoundrel” was about the wonderful absurdity of a Benjamin Schwartz New Yorker cartoon exploiting the Desert Island meme, with everything turning on the message in the sand of the tiny island Bill and his companion share with their ratty palm tree — who could possibly have left it there? —
Of three principal senses of suck, this was intended to be suck-C, an intransitive slang verb of denigration; the ingestion verb, suck-A, is irrelevant to the context; finally, the sexual verb, suck-B, was probably not on BS’s mind (though young men on a small island might turn to fellatio for sexual pleasure), but was certainly on mine
I have written extensively on this blog on these senses of suck, their uses, and their sociocultural contexts — compact summary coming soon — because in my gay male world (one of a number of worlds I inhabit), sucking cock is, simply, everyday sex, and consequently the verb suck has been elaborated and played on in that world, and all of that is of interest to me as a linguist (linguistics being another of the worlds I live in).
But I thought to steer clear of the gay stuff yesterday, so as not to distract readers from the intricate delights of the cartoon (which still makes me laugh every time I look at it). But I have a friend who is named Bill, who is gay, and who was moved to comment (on this blog) on yesterday’s cartoon:
I guess I DO suck, or at least would like to.
So then Bill sucks ‘Bill sucks dick’ was on the table. And we’re off for a holiday in Blow Job City.
The three verbs SUCK: the quick tour (with invented examples, so I can manipulate the context; GDoS has a rich collection of examples, but they take a good bit of work to understand properly in context):
A: an oral-ingestion action verb
— neutral in register; as a transitive (I sat with my Coke, and meditatively sucked it through a straw), or with object omitted but understood (I sat with my Coke, and meditatively sucked through a straw)
B: an oral-sex action verb
— slang for ‘fellate s.o., suck s.o.’s cock’; as a transitive, construed with a direct object denoting either a penis (As a teenager, I sucked a lot of dicks), or, by metonymy, the bearer of a serviced penis (As a teenager, I sucked a lot of boys); or with object omitted but understood (As a teenager, I sucked in mensrooms almost every day) — GDoS ‘to perform fellatio (on)’
C: a verb of (negative) judgment
— denigrative slang (Your ideas suck), intransitive — GDoS ‘of people, objects, situations, to be worthless, contemptible, pointless, objectionable’
For reasons I don’t understand, NOAD has only A and C, but offers a possible account of the origin of C:
verb suck: 1 [a] [with object] draw into the mouth by contracting the muscles of the lip and mouth to make a partial vacuum: they suck mint juleps through straws … [AZ: the central sense] … 2 [no object] North American informal be very bad, disagreeable, or disgusting: I love your country, but the weather sucks. [NOAD: by association with vulgar slang suckhole]
noun suckhole: … 2 Canadian & Australian vulgar slang a sycophant. [AZ: that is, a kiss-ass, an ass-kisser; or more vulgarly here, an asshole-sucker]
From this blog, three postings on SUCK.
— in my 2/17/19 posting “Eat it! The oral humiliation you deserve”:
A note on intransitive suck. As with humiliation uses of eat it, denigrating uses of suck are easily contaminated by sexual uses. The sense in question is this one, from NOAD:
verb suck: 3 [no object] North American informal be very bad, disagreeable, or disgusting: I love your country, but the weather sucks.
This usage is very widespread, and most speakers make no conscious association with cocksucking — but some do, and find the usage offensive; and many seem to feel that the usage gets some of its punch from fellatial associations.
— in my 10/29/19 posting “Annals of burritio” (like fellatio, but with a burrito instead of a dick), extensive material on sexual SUCK
— in my 2/4/22 posting “Four approaches to sucking someone’s socks off”: an essay on the related SUCK OFF and various senses of to suck s.o.’s socks off