"suck a lemon" meaning in English

See suck a lemon in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-suck a lemon.ogg [Australia] Forms: sucks a lemon [present, singular, third-person], sucking a lemon [participle, present], sucked a lemon [participle, past], sucked a lemon [past]
Etymology: From the grimace one sometimes gets from tasting the tartness of a lemon's citric acid. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} suck a lemon (third-person singular simple present sucks a lemon, present participle sucking a lemon, simple past and past participle sucked a lemon)
  1. (idiomatic, UK) To be in a sour or negative mood. Tags: UK, idiomatic Synonyms: suck lemons
    Sense id: en-suck_a_lemon-en-verb-b631JYVF Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for suck a lemon meaning in English (1.6kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the grimace one sometimes gets from tasting the tartness of a lemon's citric acid.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sucks a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucking a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucked a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucked a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "suck a lemon (third-person singular simple present sucks a lemon, present participle sucking a lemon, simple past and past participle sucked a lemon)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I knew he must've woke up sucking a lemon when he didn't even say hello.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be in a sour or negative mood."
      ],
      "id": "en-suck_a_lemon-en-verb-b631JYVF",
      "links": [
        [
          "sour",
          "sour"
        ],
        [
          "negative",
          "negative"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, UK) To be in a sour or negative mood."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "suck lemons"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-suck a lemon.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f6/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "suck a lemon"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the grimace one sometimes gets from tasting the tartness of a lemon's citric acid.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sucks a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucking a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucked a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sucked a lemon",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "suck a lemon (third-person singular simple present sucks a lemon, present participle sucking a lemon, simple past and past participle sucked a lemon)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I knew he must've woke up sucking a lemon when he didn't even say hello.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be in a sour or negative mood."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "sour",
          "sour"
        ],
        [
          "negative",
          "negative"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, UK) To be in a sour or negative mood."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-suck a lemon.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f6/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/En-au-suck_a_lemon.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "suck lemons"
    }
  ],
  "word": "suck a lemon"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.