sook

English from 14thC, Scottish from 19thC. From Old English sūcan (“to suck”). See suck.

sook (third-person singular simple present sooks, present participle sooking, simple past and past participle sooked)

1. Alternative spelling of suck
   • 1832, Scottish proverbs, collected and arranged by A. Henderson, p 32:

     Ae hour′s cauld will sook out seven years′ heat.

   • 1864, William Duncan Latto: Tammas Bodkin: Or, the Humours of a Scottish Tailor, p 378:

     Tibbie an' Andro bein' at that moment in the act o' whirlin' roond us were sooked into the vortex an' upset likewise, so that here were haill four o's sprawlin' i' the floor at ance.

   • 1903, John Stevenson: Pat M′Carty, Farmer, of Antrim: His Rhymes, with a Setting, p 182:

     You pursed your mooth in shape like O,

     And sook′d the air in, might and main

Probably from suck. Compare sukey (attested 1838), Sucky (1844), Suke (1850); sook from 1906.

• suck
• suke

• IPA^(key): /suːk/, /sʊk/

sook (plural sooks)

1. (Scotland, rare) Familiar name for a calf.
2. (US dialectal) Familiar name for a cow.
3. (Newfoundland) A cow or sheep.
4. (Australia, New Zealand) A poddy calf.

• (poddy calf): sookie (diminutive)

sook

1. (Scotland) A call for calves.
   • 1919, Strickland Gillilan, A Sample Case of Humor, page 47,

     Mother actually turned her back on that sheep and began dabbling her hand in the milk, saying, “Sook, calfy, sook, calfy!” seductively while the calf gave her the evil eue and walked backward.

   • 1947, John Avery Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, page 265,

     “You get outside the cowlot gate and start calling like this:

     “Sook calf, sook calf, sook calfie,

     Sook calf, sook calf! […] ”

2. (US dialectal) A call for cattle.
3. (Newfoundland) A call for cattle or sheep.

• (call): sook cow,sookie, sookow, sukow, suck, sucky, suck cow, sukey

Probably from dialectal suck. Compare 19thC British slang sock (“overgrown baby”), British dialect suckerel (“suckling foal, unweaned child”), Canadian suck (“crybaby”), Canadian suck (“sycophant”). From 1933.

• IPA^(key): /sʊk/

sook (plural sooks)

1. (Australia, Atlantic Canada, New Zealand, slang, derogatory) A crybaby, a complainer, a whinger; a shy or timid person, a wimp; a coward.

   Don′t be such a sook.

   • 2006, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ten Things I Hate About Me, unnumbered page,

     You must think I′m a sook, hey? Here I am complaining about my dad′s job and my curfew and your dad cheated on your mum. You put things into perspective for me.

   • 2007, Jan Teagle Kapetas, Lubra Lips, Lubra Lips: Reflections on my Face, Maureen Perkins (editor), Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia, page 31,

     ‘What a sook! Look at her cry!’

     ‘Yeah, look at the Abo cry!’

   • 2008, Kieran Kelly, Aspiring: Mountain climbing is no cure for middle age, Pan MacMillan Australia, page 233,

     Only sooks ask guides how far there is to go.

2. (Australia, Atlantic Canada, New Zealand, slang) A sulk or complaint; an act of sulking.

   I was so upset that I went home and had a sook about it.

   • 2002, June Duncan Owen, Mixed Matches: Interracial Marriage in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, page 87,

     ‘Have a sook! Have a sook!’, they′d all yell. But that time I didn′t go outside to cry.

• (timid person): scaredy-cat, sissy

• sookey (adjective)
• sooky (adjective)
• sooky la-la

• sookie, sookies, sooky, sooky baby (Atlantic Canada)

From Arabic سُوق‎ (sūq, “market”). From 1926. See souq.

• IPA^(key): /suk/

sook (plural sooks)

1. Alternative spelling of souq (“Arab market”).
   • 1964, Qantas Airways, Qantas Airways Australia, Volumes 30-31, page 11,

     Against these riches you may buy a cup of the bitter, herbed black final coffee from a street vendor for ten piasters — about 1½d. — and step through an arch into the next sook devoted to cheap shoes and vegetables and as full of the turbaned poor as an Arabian Nights reality.

Origin unknown. From Chesapeake Bay, attested as early as 1948.

• IPA^(key): /suːk/

sook (plural sooks)

1. (US, Eastern Shore of Maryland) A mature female Chesapeake Bay blue crab, Callinectes sapidus.
   • 1948, John Cleary Pearson, Fluctuations in the Abundance of the Blue Crab in Chesapeake Bay, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, page 4:

     "The life cycle of the crab in the bay causes a preponderance of adult males (jimmy crabs) to occur in the waters of the upper bay while conversely a concentration of adult females (sook crabs) occurs in the more saline waters near the mouth of the bay (table 2)."

• soko