sook - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
sook, suck vb To suck. Hence sook! sook!; suck! suck!; sucky! interj In Ulster a feeding call to calves, lambs or piglets; in the U.S. usually to cows. In the U.S. many derivatives have developed (e.g. soo calfy, soo cow, sook boss, sook bossie, sook buck, sook cow, sookee, sook heifer, sook sookee, swoo cow, etc.). [oed sook n/interj ‘a call used to summon or drive away cattle (in Scotland generally calves)’ Scottish and U.S. dialect; snd sook interj ‘a call (usu. repeated) to an animal, most often a calf, but occasionally a lamb or pig; web3 alteration of suck; soo cow perhaps alteration of sook cow; dare interj chiefly Midland, South, Texas]
Ulst.:
1880 Patterson Antrim/Down Glossary 101 suck! suck! = a call to a calf.
c1955 Montgomery Heard in Ulster 130 = a call to cows.
1969 Braidwood Ulster Dial Lex 32 sook/sookie ’a call to calves’, [is] current in Scots, it being the Scots form of suck.
2014 Fenton Hamely Tongue 226 = to suck; sook! sook! = feeding call to calves.
U.S.:
1899 Green Virginia Word-Book 349 = a call for hogs, used when they are called to their food.
1942 Chase Jack Tales 25 ‘Sook buck!’ says the old lady. ‘Sook here! Sook buck! Stand still now!’
1949 Kurath Word Geog East US 38 The Midland call sook! has been carried rather farther into the piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina than most Midland expressions, perhaps as the result of the introduction of stock raising from the western parts of these states into the plantation country.
1966-68 DARE Coll: sook sookee, swoo cow, soo cow, sook cow = calls to get the cows to come in from the pasture.
1977 Hamilton Mt Memories 60 I would look and look and call them, ‘Sook Jersey, Sook Bonnie’ till old Jersey would shake her head at the flies, and the bell would tinkle.
1994 Parton Dolly 13 I caught the first glimpse of the kerosene lantern Mama was holding as she called Bessie, ‘Sook, sook!’
Purchase From Ulster to America
The second, revised edition of Michael Montgomery’s From Ulster to America is now available here:
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (Europe)
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (North America)
