sucker

Sucker is a noun with several distinct meanings. It can refer to a person who is easily deceived or exploited, a gull or patsy. It can also denote a fish that feeds by suction, especially members of the family Catostomidae commonly known as suckers, which have a specialized mouth adapted for sucking food from surfaces. The term is also used for creatures such as lampreys in reference to their suction-like mouths.

In another sense, a sucker is a device that attaches by suction, such as a suction cup or other suction-based tool used in cleaning, mounting, or medical applications. A candy on a stick, commonly known as a sucker, is another well-known meaning in American English.

In horticulture, a sucker is a shoot that grows from the root or base of a plant, often emerging independently of the main stem. Suckers can be undesirable in some cultivated plants, where they are removed to direct energy to the desired growth.

As a verb, to sucker someone means to persuade or trick them into doing something; to be suckered is to be duped. The term can also appear in mechanical or industrial contexts, such as the sucker rod used in surface pumping systems for extracting fluids in oil wells.

Etymology traces the word to the verb suck, with senses involving attachment by suction or deception developing over time. The term appears across biology, industry, and everyday language with varied but related concepts of suction, growth, and gullibility.