Antedating of "Suck"

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sun Jun 27 17:11:14 UTC 2010


A website at www.londonlives.org has a very interesting searchable corpus of manuscripts and printed materials relating to "Crime, Poverty, and Social Policy in the Metropolis" between 1690 and 1800.  Here is a citation for the verb "suck" in its sexual sense, much before the 1928 first use in the Oxford English Dictionary (but note 1891 citation in OED s.v. _cocksucker_):


1772 _Old Bailey Proceedings_ 9 Sept. (www.londonlives.org)   John Gray < no role > . Crook was brought to our watch-house, in Swan-yard, on Monday morning, by Dennis; Crook said that on the 3d of September he left off work in the evening, about seven o'clock; went to the Red Lion in Moorfields, to drink a pint of beer; that just as he had drunk the beer, Gibson came in and sat down by him; that Gibson asked him to drink with him; that when he called for another pint, he asked him if he knew Dick that had lived there; said he, he had a fine - fit to do Mrs. - ; he said after that, he went out at the door to make water, and Gibson followed him, and said, what sort of a c - k have you got? Dick was just such another slim young man as you; let me teel it; which he did; he said it was not so big as his; that then he took him down to the vault, forced him down on the seat, onbuttoned his breeches, then worked him till he made it come, and then sucked it; that he worked it again s!
 ometime; that then he pressed him very close, called him his dear, hugged him and squeezed him and sat down, put his hand behind him, and put it into his b - e, and worked up and down till he hurt him vastly, and he believed made him bleed.


Fred Shapiro
Editor
YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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