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Spook vs Sook - What's the difference?

spook | sook |

As nouns the difference between spook and sook

is that spook is a spirit returning to haunt a place while sook is meal.

As a verb spook

is to scare or frighten.

spook

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A spirit returning to haunt a place.
    • The visit to the old cemetery brought scary visions of spooks and ghosts.
  • A ghost or an apparition.
    • The building was haunted by a couple of spooks .
  • A hobgoblin.
  • (espionage) A spy.
  • * 2009 , "Spies like them", BBC News Magazine (online), 24 July 2009:
    • From Ian Fleming to John Le Carre - authors have long been fascinated by the world of espionage. But, asks the BBC’s Gordon Corera, what do real life spooks make of fictional spies?
  • * 2012 , The Economist, Oct 13th 2012, Huawei and ZTE: Put on hold
    • The congressional study frets that Huawei’s and ZTE’s products could be used as Trojan horses by Chinese spooks .
  • A scare or fright.
    • The big spider gave me a spook .
  • (dated, pejorative) A black person.

    • Synonyms

    * See also

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To scare or frighten.
  • To startle or frighten an animal
    • The movement in the bushes spooked the deer and they ran.

    Derived terms

    * spookiness * spookish * spook out * spooky

    See also

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    sook

    English

    Etymology 1

    English from 14thC, Scottish from 19thC. From (etyl) . See suck.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • * 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

    Etymology 2

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

    Alternative forms

    * suck * suke

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (Scotland, rare) Familiar name for a calf.
  • Familiar name for a cow.
  • (Newfoundland) A cow or sheep.
  • (Australia, New Zealand) A poddy calf.
  • (US, Eastern Shore of Maryland) A female Chesapeake Bay blue crab.
    • Synonyms
    * (poddy calf) sookie (diminutive)

    Interjection

    (en interjection)
  • (Scotland) A call for calves.
  • * 1919 , , 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 , , 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!”
  • A call for cattle.
  • (Newfoundland) A call for cattle or sheep.
    • Synonyms
    * (call) sook cow,sookie, sookow, sukow, suck, sucky, suck cow, sukey

    Etymology 3

    Probably from dialectal suck. Compare 19thC British slang . From 1933.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (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 , , 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.
  • (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.
    Related terms
    * sookie, sookies, sooky, sooky baby (Atlantic Canada)
    Synonyms
    * (timid person) scaredy-cat, sissy
    Derived terms
    * sookey (adjective) * sooky (adjective) * sooky la-la

    Etymology 4

    From (etyl) . From 1926. See (souq).

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • .
  • * 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.

    Etymology 5

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

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The mature female blue crab, .
  • *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)."