Word.ws English Dictionary

suck a lemon

suck a lemon verb: to be in a sour or negative mood.

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. (UK, idiomatic) To be in a sour or negative mood.
    • I knew he must've woke up sucking a lemon when he didn't even say hello.
    • Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon / Everything, Everything, Everything / In its right place2000, “Everything in Its Right Place”, in Kid A, performed by Radiohead

Forms of suck a lemon

third-person singular presentsucks a lemon
present participlesucking a lemon
past participlesucked a lemon
pastsucked a lemon
alternative formsuck lemons

Origin of suck a lemon

From the grimace one sometimes gets from tasting the tartness of a lemon's citric acid.

Questions about suck a lemon

What does suck a lemon mean?
Suck a lemon means to be in a sour or negative mood.
What part of speech is suck a lemon?
Suck a lemon is a verb.
What is the past tense of suck a lemon?
The past tense of suck a lemon is sucked a lemon.

Words near suck a lemon in the dictionary

  1. Sucio
  2. Suciu
  3. suck
  4. suck a bag of dicks
  5. suck a big one
  6. suck a lemon
  7. suck all the air out of
  8. suck all the oxygen out of
  9. suck and blow
  10. suck arse
  11. suck ass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: suck a lemon (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-suck a lemon.ogg.

Cite this entry: “suck a lemon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/suck_a_lemon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.