Monday 20 June 2011

Eyecandy Monday

Suck v Suckle

I find these words slighty problematic in an erotica context. I do like to use suckle sometimes because I find it a dirtier word than suck for some reason.

Suck is straightforward: it's a transitive verb (ie it has a subject and and object): "She sucked his big cock" ...  "He sucked her pert nipples."

Suckle is a weird one. It's not a synonym for suck. To suckle mean to breastfeed when transitive: "She suckled her child." But if used of the sucker, it is technically intransitive (no object) so you can't say "He suckled her breasts."

I think you could say "He suckled on her breasts."  (It does carry a heavy connotation of actually feeding ... but that's okay because you can use metaphor in erotica. Just think how boring it would be if you couldn't!)

Any English majors out there who can correct me?

9 comments:

Eloise said...

FWIW I think you're right. Except when you say "Suckle is a weird once." That seems to have an excess of c's.

I think you can use a preposition in there, at, on etc. all seem grammatical to me. I suppose in theory that means after and in should to, but it's harder to see an use for them with suckling. :)

Chris said...

I think it would be he suckled 'at' her breast(s). But then I did science so I don't know anything.

Janine Ashbless said...

Typo fixed Eloise!

And I think you're right Chris ... but the substitution of "at" for "on" for some reason really emphasises the feeding/milk connotation in my mind. Maybe I am still trying to elide suckle with suck despite everything...

Jo said...

I suspect that suckle is only for breasts, not for anything else, which is maybe why you don't suckle someone's breasts directly :)

Suckle on seems ok to me, but at too.

Not sure I agree it's dirty, but then, well... I've been more about the breastfeeding than the raunch for some time now, I suppose.

Janine Ashbless said...

Not sure I agree it's dirty, but then, well... I've been more about the breastfeeding than the raunch for some time now, I suppose.

Multiple exposure in a practical context stops most things being dirty (in a sexual sense). I bet gynecologists don't find vulvas rude either ...

Madeline Moore said...

Why not ask Olivia. She knows everything.

Some women can lactate if her breasts are suckled for a period of time by her avid lover. Apparently, prozac can make some women lactate.

On the topic of suckling actual babies, I had a 55 hour labour with my first child. (At home for 31 of those hours, the last 10 or so with my midwife, then 24 at the hospital, which is the maximum a hospital allows before they move into C-section mode.)

The baby turned around and was delivered (in 45 minutes, you can bet I wasted no time getting her out once it was possible.)

So I had had hundreds of contractions, in the beginning half an hour apart, then ten minutes apart for another twelve hours or so, then 5, 4, 3 . . . you get the picture.

After giving birth, a woman's uterus starts the business of returning to normal. Every time I suckled my (gorgeous) baby girl, my uterus contracted and I was hit with a blast of endorphins that sent me into ecstasy. My husband at the time said, and he would know, that I'd start nursing her and then 'go on the nod.' I've never experienced any drug that came close to being as fantastic as that one, so you had a very content mother and baby.

I told my midwife, because I felt sort of 'guilty' for 'getting off' on nursing, and she said it sometimes happens and is perfectly okay.

My labour with my second child was something like 12 hours, maybe a few more. I've never told her this but, nursing her made me nauseous for the first few weeks. What a rip! What did it mean?

My midwife said it was perfectly normal. Because I'd had such a long labour with the first, I'd been 'rewarded' I guess with endorphin blasts while nursing. A normal labour and delivery did not give me the same experience.

I know this is a long post but I have to add this: I read about a girl who told her doctor (some hick town in the US) that nursing her baby felt sexual. They took her baby away.

Such is the power of language. I'm positive she'd had the same experience I'd had, but she didn't have the vocabulary to describe it, nor did she have a knowledgeable midwife or doctor to explain it.

So she lost her kid.

Finally, there are herbs a woman can take to make her lactate if her partner wants to truly suckle.

Janine Ashbless said...

Wah! I was only concerned with the grammar!
;-)

Hmm .. do you know what herbs by any chance? I've read some porn where this was used as a kink but to be honest I thought it was just a fiction.

Jo said...

Even men can lactate! And I heard a story about a 15 year old babysitter who spontaneously lactated when the baby she was looking after was fussy and wouldn't stop crying. Resourceful girl, she went ahead and fed him :)

http://www.naturehasthecure.com/Induced-Lactation-Herbs.html

Madeline, that story is ... disgusting. But then, it doesn't have to be a hick town - look at facebook banning photos of women feeding babies as offensive. Or the woman being kicked off the Delta flight.

Modern inability to understand how our bodies and emotions work around birth and parenthood is bizarre in the extreme, I think.

Janine Ashbless said...

Thanks for the link Jo.
I am now ... informed.