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<font size=3>Something that has been bothering me about this discussion
(and nobody, unless I've missed it has mentioned it) is that the word
'sucker' seems much older, and, according to the OED, derives from a very
old sense (c 1400) meaning being not yet weaned, and thus newcomer,
greenhorn, and, by the usual semantic extensions, 'simpleton'.
Certainly, 'There's a sucker born every minute' is nineteenth century--I
found a website yesterday tracing its origin to one of P T Barnum's
competitors, incidentally. And until this debate started I had
never connected 'sucker' (as in gullible fool, etc.) with the somewhat
different meaning of 'be bad'. Interestingly, the connotation the
word now seems to have ('that movie sucks') seems to be merely 'bad', not
necessarily 'disgusting, revolting' etc. Admittedly, that's based
on my (perhaps less than reliable) intuitions of its meaning.<br><br>
Geoff</font></body>
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