Word.ws English Dictionary

embrace the suck

embrace the suck verb: to consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.

Verb

embrace the suck (third-person singular simple present embraces the suck, present participle embracing the suck, simple past and past participle embraced the suck)

  1. (slang) To consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.
    • So go ahead and embrace the suck of the first mile or so, you'll be through it soon enough.2013, Brett Stewart, 7 Weeks to a 10K, →ISBN
    • But I embraced the suck and shelled out three thousand dollars for something I didn't want and something that would give me nothing to show for.2014, Hailey Dollar, A Girl Lost to the World and Found in the Art of War, →ISBN

Examples of embrace the suck in a sentence

  • If you can embrace the suck, you can overcome almost any obstacle or difficulty.2015, Rob Roy, Chris Lawson, The Navy SEAL Art of War, →ISBN:
  • Just: embrace the suck.” Lorrie Ann understood that this was soldier slang and that it meant something along the lines of “The world is shitty, but we've got to deal with it.”2015, Rufi Thorpe, The Girls from Corona Del Mar, →ISBN, page 71:
  • As first reported by Politico, she told them to "embrace the suck." ... [W]hen did military types start talking about embracing the suck?2013 December 13, Ben Zimmer, “Nancy Pelosi Told House Democrats to "Embrace the Suck." Where Did That Phrase Come From?”, in Slate:

Forms of embrace the suck

third-person singular presentembraces the suck
present participleembracing the suck
past participleembraced the suck
pastembraced the suck

Questions about embrace the suck

What does embrace the suck mean?
Embrace the suck means to consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.
How do you use embrace the suck in a sentence?
If you can embrace the suck, you can overcome almost any obstacle or difficulty.
What part of speech is embrace the suck?
Embrace the suck is a verb.
What is the past tense of embrace the suck?
The past tense of embrace the suck is embraced the suck.

Words near embrace the suck in the dictionary

  1. Embra
  2. embracability
  3. embracable
  4. embrace
  5. embrace the penguin
  6. embrace the suck
  7. embrace, extend and extinguish
  8. embraceability
  9. embraceable
  10. embraceably
  11. embraced

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: embrace the suck (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-embrace the suck.ogg.

Cite this entry: “embrace the suck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/embrace_the_suck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.