USA Today on "sucks "

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:10:58 -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:

>It could be (I'd say should be) argued that there's a generally
>tendency for these non-episodic intransitives to be understood
>euphemistically, i.e. with an unarticulated object one would just as
>soon not specify explicitly:
>
>X sucks/blows
>Y swallows
>W drinks [sc. '...alcohol']
>W smells [sc. '...bad']
>
>(The last isn't agentive, to be sure, but the 'smells bad' sense
>represents a similar development.)
>Others?

There's also "X bites". HDAS has:

 to be exceptionally hateful, disappointing, unfair, etc.; SUCK. --
 also constr. with _it_, or followed by various phrases sugg. fellatio
 (for which see _bite the big one_, below) or coprophila.


--Ben Zimmer