SUCKING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sucking mean? 

• SUCKING (noun)
  The noun SUCKING has 1 sense:

1. the act of sucking

  Familiarity information: SUCKING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUCKING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of sucking

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

suck; sucking; suction

Hypernyms ("sucking" is a kind of...):

consumption; ingestion; intake; uptake (the process of taking food into the body through the mouth (as by eating))

Derivation:

suck (draw into the mouth by creating a practical vacuum in the mouth)

 Context examples 

Things you can do include sipping water, avoiding drinks with caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol, and chewing sugarless gum or sucking on sugarless hard candy.

(Dry Mouth, NIH: National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Disorders)

Signs and symptoms appear in infancy and include loss of the motor abilities, poor sucking abilities, irritability, lack of muscle tone, and seizures.

(Leigh Disease, NCI Thesaurus)

Keesh finished sucking a marrow-bone and rose to his feet.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Though exact taxonomy is still controversial, they can be grouped in the orders ANOPLURA (sucking lice), MALLOPHAGA (biting lice), and Rhynchophthirina (elephant-lice).

(Lice, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

A solid composed of a sugared, medicated candy mounted to a stick, which can be held while sucking or chewing on the candy.

(Lollipop Dosage Form, NCI Thesaurus)

A large order of insects having a single pair of wings and sucking or piercing mouths; includes true flies and mosquitoes and gnats and crane flies.

(Diptera, NCI Thesaurus)

A symptom of gastrointestinal dysfunction seen in neonates who have been exposed to drugs during pregnancy; often accompanied by excessive sucking of fists, fingers and thumbs.

(Excessive Sucking, NCI Thesaurus)

He entered the ring, sucking a lemon, with Jim Belcher and Caleb Baldwin, the coster, at his heels.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Infected blood-sucking bugs, sometimes called kissing bugs, spread it.

(Chagas Disease, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

The disease is transmitted by triatomine bugs ‒ blood-sucking insects known by several different names in Latin America (chinche, chirimacha and barbero, among others).

(Açaí fruit can transmit Chagas disease, SciDev.Net)