(Originally as a mark of respect.)Īnyone, one an unspecified individual or group of individuals (as subject or object). The person spoken to or written to, as a subject. The people spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Replacing thee originally as a mark of respect.) The person spoken to or written to, as an object. The people spoken, or written to, as an object. Cognate with jo, jo, jou & u, eu, iu, vos. Have you gentlemen come to see the lady who fell backwards off a bus?Įtymology: From you, yow, ȝow, (object case of ye), from eow, iow (dative case of ge), from iwwiz (dative case of jīz), western variety of izwiz (dative case of ), from wes, object case of. The individual or group spoken or written to.

In your specific example scenario - speaking with a client - I would not use it.Wiktionary (3.14 / 22 votes) Rate this definition: To answer your question about formality: this construction is so common that I would hesitate to call it slang, but it certainly feels a little informal. 3) has the speaker sarcastically suggesting that, since her job is so unpleasant, nobody would have volunteered for it unless they were a sucker for punishment. 2) implies that Ted not only likes whipped cream, but will automatically eat any dessert with whipped cream on it, no matter how tasteless the amount of whipped cream. 1) would be most likely uttered in a context where the speaker is justifying how he got involved in a regrettable relationship - he shouldn't have been with this person for some reason, but he's a sucker for a pretty face. I'm a sucker for punishment I guess.Īll of these illustrate the concept that to be a sucker for something means to be attracted to it while being somewhat blind to its other qualities, suffering as a result. Also called levidromes, anadromes, reverse pairs, and plain backwards words, emordnilaps are a fun oddity of the English language. I don't know why I volunteered for this job. What Does Emordnilap Mean Emordnilaps, or semordnilap if youre really into doing things backward (s), give you reversed pairs of words, not the same word. Ted is a sucker for any dessert with whipped cream on it. This source, which does not seem like the greatest source, nonetheless offers three usage examples which seem fairly typical to me:

The connection to sucker meaning something like loser, therefore, is that someone who is a sucker for something may get into a bad situation as a result, or at the very least enjoys X to a degree that seems injudicious and excessive. At least in my experience, 'I'm a sucker for X' means that I am drawn to X regardless of what other characteristics X may have.

Another word for you are mean