USA Today on "sucks "

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Why doesn't "eat" work this way? "John sucks/blows" doesn't require a
>surface object, but "John eats" does. This has only a literal meaning.
>But "John eats it" has both a literal reading and a slang reading,
>which slang reading is ambiguous. "John eats it" can mean that he
>enjoys performing fellatio and/or cunnilingus/cunnilinctus or that
>he's into scat.

I have heard "eats" used in more-or-less this way, with no explicit object,
as early as 1967 or 1968, e.g., "This really eats" (= "... sucks" = "...
blows" = "... bites"). I don't think "John eats" works because it sounds
habitual and everybody would admit to habitually eating (not everyone would
admit to habitually blowing or sucking, maybe).

-- Doug Wilson