Where did the expression "It sucks" come from ?

Question

Everybody says a bad situation "sucks" . When something "sucks", what does it suck ? Where did that expression come from ? The expression "It sucks" is crude and it doesn't make any sense . Why is such a meaningless expression so popular ? Why do people use a phrase if it doesn't make any sense ? Why do people use such a crude phrase ?

Answer 1

I looked online and could not find proof that it came from reference to fellatio or oral sex, but that is commonly assumed.

My understanding is that it started as an insult "you suck" before being applied to other things. Similar to telling someone to "kiss your behind," this led to more crude phrases such as "eat me."

I found two references that the phrase could have developed as a close cousin to the phrases "sucking up" or "sucks to you."

The reason the phrase is so popular is that it is stronger and carries more emphasis than "that stinks." Variations are also common such as "that blows," also referring to oral sex.

=================
http://www.slate.com/id/2146866/

Besides, it's not even clear that sucks has naughty origins. We might trace its roots to the phrase sucks hind teat, meaning inferior. Or there's sucks to you, a nonsexual taunt apparently favored by British schoolchildren of yore. Of course, when a 9-year-old girl walks up to you tomorrow and tells you that "Blue's Clues sucks," she won't be aware of these past usages. But neither will she have in mind (or understand) the much dirtier alternative. The point is that sucks has become untethered from its past and carries no tawdry implications for those who use it.

=================
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/10/03/dissing_the_dirt/

For the past decade, the slang word most delicately balanced on this usage bubble has been sucks, as in "Mom, these sneakers suck." Seven years ago, when I first wrote about it, I was sure it was headed for respectability: The kids using the term had no sense of any sexual meaning, after all, and (as my then-teenage daughter pointed out) the new usage was intransitive; there was no grammatical object being sucked. Sucks may have been borrowed from the slang for fellating, but innocent employment, I thought, would neutralize its iffy past.

It had respectable relatives, too. Sucks to you! (origin unknown) had been ordinary British youthspeak since the early 20th century, and suck up to, though probably of indelicate ancestry, was so thoroughly domesticated that in 1953, C.S. Lewis used it in one of his Narnia books for children.

Besides, suck has so many standard uses that you can't really quarantine the syllable. Sucker meaning "dupe," for instance, is merely a babe in the woods, a still-suckling newborn; and to children in many parts of the country, a sucker is an innocent lollipop.

But I didn't reckon with the literalists, who decided kids should know this was a bad word, even if they'd prefer that someone else explained why.

We could have told the kids "sucks" was short for "sucks lemons" and left well enough alone, but no: Parents banned it, then Red Sox fans adopted it for their (increasingly pathetic) slogan, and some of them, just to show that they really meant to be crude, wore their "Yankees suck" T-shirts with "Jeter swallows" on the back.

This is a shame, for though every civilization needs a store of taboo words, sucks is a useful slang verb. The finger-waggers say we should use "more descriptive" words -- "that movie was execrable," perhaps, and "the Yankees are evil" -- but in fact, sucks energetically fills a syntactical role that would otherwise belong to "to be," that essential but uninspiring verb. Strunk and White ("Use the active voice") would have to approve, and so do I.

E-mail: [e-mail].

Answer 2

Sucks Meaning

Answer 3

RG is correct. My college degree is in English language speech so I am familiar with expressions. I am also an "old timer". Where there was the phrase "sucker" we used to use in the 50s as kids, the phrase "that sucks" or similar phrases used today come from language used by young people and hippies in the sixties. We used to say "suck me", "suck this" (while pointing to your crotch), "blow me" (pointing to same area), "that sucks d**k", "suck my d***", etc. But over time, as with so many other phrases, it's gotten shortened and has lost it's meaning. It now is meaningless as used. If people only realized what they are actually saying they would be embarrassed. I hear it used in church all the time! It would be more appropriate to use a phrase like "that stinks" than sucks.

Answer 4

This use of scratch comes from a line or mark drawn or scratched into the ground to indicate a boundary or starting-point in sports, especially cricket & boxing. That meaning of scratch goes back to the late 18th century. From there it came to apply specifically to the starting point, in a handicap, of a competitor who received no odds: "Mr. Tom Sabin, of the Coventry Bicycle Club, has won, during last week, three races from scratch." (Bicycle Journal, August 18, 1878). It was later applied figuratively with the meaning "from nothing", and it was used thus by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922): "A poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny." Thereafter it was taking up in cooking once boxed mixes and prepared foods became available. Today it is a badge of honor to be able to say one made a culinary dish from scratch.

Answer 5

As the phrase appears to have emerged in modern US culture it is tempting to imagine it originated there, but the term sucker, as a derogatory description of a naive person (probably related to a suckling child) is first recorded in American English as early as 1836. According to Etymonline, this sense of the verb 'to suck' emerged in 1836. From the same source, there was a fish called a sucker which was very easy to catch and was recorded as a metaphor for naïveté in the mid-1700s. It may also be worth considering as a source the mythical medieval female demon succubus, which was believed to prey on men by seducing them in their sleep.

Answer 6

The expression is quite innocent and has nothing to do with a sexual reference, unless you have a dirty mind.
So, the question what does 'it sucks' mean should begin with the question 'what sucks'. For that there is ONLY one answer, a. vacuum. A vacuum is empty, useless space. When you say someone sucks, you are saying they are void, without any reason for being there.
Thank you.

Answer 7

In Science, nothing sucks. There is no such thing as something being sucked / pulled forward. Instead it is pushed or blown away from where it starts. For example a vacuum doesn t pull the dirt up toward it. Rather, the air pressure pushes the dirt AWAY from the ground. We don t suck a milkshake through a straw. The milkshake pushes it up to us.

http://pagefillers.com/scienceblog/?p=17

Regardless, for the phrase my understanding is that it s short for "It sucks sh_t" .
It doesn t give me a sexual connotation just a scatological one.

Answer 8

This could be one possibility:

The early Jazz musicians would say that a guy could really "Blow" if he had a good sound when playing the horn. If he couldn't play very well then they would say that he was "Sucking" on that horn. That's where the term "Suck" as being something bad came from.

He plays that horn so poorly that he must be sucking on it.

He doesn't blow, he sucks.

Source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Suck

Answer 9

Clearly, clearly, clearly ... TODAY'S usage of 'sucks' refers to fellatio. No question about it. Yet, many .. if not most .. users will not be aware of this connotation. References of research will find euphemisms, such as "sucks lemons", etc. This is merely a smooth-over used to try correcting ignorance of the modern utterance of the foul term.

Answer 10

I think it came more from sucks hind teat. In both cases, the meaning is the same. The said person is getting a bad deal. It sucks...