Tucker

How to spell tucker

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tucker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tucker mean?

1. verbTo exhaust or wear someone out, usually phrased as to tucker out.

Tucker in a sentence

• A full day at the theme park can tucker the kids out.

• The summer heat tends to tucker everyone out by mid-afternoon.

Where does tucker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Tucker grew out of the English verb 'tuck', which descends from Middle English 'tukken', meaning to pull, stow, or gather cloth snugly, and ultimately from Old English 'tucian', meaning to torment or ill-treat, a sense related to German 'zucken', meaning to twitch or jerk. The '-er' ending turned that base into a noun, and over the centuries the word branched into several everyday meanings. In dressmaking it named a piece of lace or linen 'tucked' around the neck and shoulders. In colloquial Australian and British English it came to mean food, the idea being the stuff you tuck away or stow in your belly, which is also why a 'tuck shop' sells snacks. The familiar 'tuckered out', meaning worn out, is recorded in nineteenth-century American English, probably from the sense of being pulled or gathered tight until you have nothing left.

How the word is built

• tuck (to pull or stow snugly)
• -er (agent/noun-forming suffix)