suckle

From Middle English sukelen; probably a back-formation of Middle English sukeling (“a suckling; infant”), formally equivalent to suck +‎ -le (frequentative suffix). See suckling.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsʌ.kəl/

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• Rhymes: -ʌkəl

suckle (plural suckles)

1. (obsolete) A teat.
   • 1638, Thomas Herbert, Some yeares travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique, London: Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, “Travels begun Anno 1626,” Book 1, p. 26,

     […] the body of this fish [the Mannatee] is commonly 3 yards long and one broad, slow in swimming, wanting fins, in their place ayded with 2 paps which are not only suckles but stilts to creep a shoare upon such time she grazes […]

2. An act of suckling

   The baby was having a suckle at its mother's breast.

suckle (third-person singular simple present suckles, present participle suckling, simple past and past participle suckled)

1. (transitive) To give suck to; to nurse at the breast, udder, or dugs.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:

     […] the breasts of Hecuba
     When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier
     Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood
     At Grecian sword, contemning.

   • 1824, Walter Savage Landor, “The Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume I, London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 35:

     Let us indulge them; they are not weak, suckled by Wisdom, taught to walk by Virtue.

2. (intransitive) To nurse; to suck milk from a nursing mother.
   • 1931, Pearl S. Buck, chapter 4, in The Good Earth‎, New York: Modern Library, published 1944, page 35:

     But out of the woman’s great brown breast the milk gushed forth for the child, milk as white as snow, and when the child suckled at one breast it flowed like a fountain from the other, and she let it flow.

3. (transitive) To nurse from (a breast, nursing mother, etc.).
   • 1982, Bernard Malamud, God’s Grace, New York: Avon, 1983, p. 60

     Buz attempted to suckle his left nipple.

   • 1997, Ridley Pearson, Beyond Recognition, New York: Hyperion, p. 129,

     She opened her eyes slightly, like a person drugged—dreamy and quiet. The baby suckled her.

• suckling

• Leucks, Luckes, Luecks

• IPA^(key): /ˈsuklə/

suckle

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