sook

present singular third person sooks · participle present sooking · participle past sooked · past sooked

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of suck.

   Ae hour's cauld will sook out seven years' heat.

   1832, Scottish proverbs, collected and arranged by A. Henderson, page 32

   2 more examples

   Tibbie an' Andro bein' at that moment in the act o' whirlin' roond us were sooked into the vortex an' upset likewise, so that here were haill four o's sprawlin' i' the floor at ance.

   1864, William Duncan Latto: Tammas Bodkin: Or, the Humours of a Scottish Tailor, page 378

   You pursed your mooth in shape like O, And sook'd the air in, might and main

   1903, John Stevenson, Pat M'Carty, Farmer, of Antrim: His Rhymes, with a Setting, page 182

plural sooks · alternative suck · alternative suke

1. ScotlandrareFamiliar name for a calf.
2. USdialectalFamiliar name for a cow.
3. AustraliaNew ZealandA poddy calf.

   Synonyms: sookie

alternative suck · alternative suke

1. ScotlandA call for calves.

   Sook calf, sook calf, sook calfie, Sook calf, sook calf! […]

   1947, John Avery Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, page 265, “You get outside the cowlot gate and start calling like this

   1 more example

   Mother actually turned her back on that sheep and began dabbling her hand in the milk, saying, “Sook, calfy, sook, calfy!” seductively while the calf gave her the evil eue and walked backward.

   1919, Strickland Gillilan, A Sample Case of Humor, page 47

2. USdialectalA call for cattle.
3. NewfoundlandA call for cattle or sheep.

plural sooks

1. Atlantic CanadaAustraliaNew ZealandderogatoryslangA crybaby, a complainer, a whinger; a shy or timid person, a wimp; a coward.

   Don't be such a sook.

   3 more examples

   You must think I'm a sook, hey? Here I am complaining about my dad's job and my curfew and your dad cheated on your mum. You put things into perspective for me.

   2006, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ten Things I Hate About Me, unnumbered page

   ‘What a sook! Look at her cry!’ ‘Yeah, look at the Abo cry!’

   2007, Jan Teagle Kapetas, “Lubra Lips, Lubra Lips: Reflections on my Face”, in Maureen Perkins, editor, Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia, page 31

   Only sooks ask guides how far there is to go.

   2008, Kieran Kelly, Aspiring: Mountain climbing is no cure for middle age, Pan MacMillan Australia, page 233

   Synonyms: scaredy-cat, sissy

2. Atlantic CanadaAustraliaNew ZealandslangA sulk or complaint; an act of sulking.

   I was so upset that I went home and had a sook about it.

   1 more example

   ‘Have a sook! Have a sook!’, they'd all yell. But that time I didn't go outside to cry.

   2002, June Duncan Owen, Mixed Matches: Interracial Marriage in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, page 87

plural sooks

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of souq (“Arab market”).

   1 more example

   1964, Qantas Airways, Qantas Airways Australia, Volumes 30-31, page 11, Against these riches you may buy a cup of the bitter, herbed black final coffee from a street vendor for ten piasters — about 1½d. — and step through an arch into the next sook devoted to cheap shoes and vegetables and as full of the turbaned poor as an Arabian Nights reality.

plural sooks

1. USeastern shore of MarylandA mature female Chesapeake Bay blue crab (Callinectes sapidus).

   The life cycle of the crab in the bay causes a preponderance of adult males (jimmy crabs) to occur in the waters of the upper bay while conversely a concentration of adult females (sook crabs) occurs in the more saline waters near the mouth of the bay (table 2).

   1948, John Cleary Pearson, Fluctuations in the Abundance of the Blue Crab in Chesapeake Bay, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, page 4

1. nonstandardpastsimple past of seek