ˈsucking-fish
A fish furnished with a sucker or adhesive organ. a. The remora, Echeneis remora.
| 1697 W. Dampier Voy. I. iii. 64 The Sucking-fish is about the bigness of a large Whiting. 1756 P. Browne Jamaica 493 The Sucking Fish. This fish is remarkable on account of its scuta,..by whose setulæ..it fastens itself to the sides of ships, planks, fishes, or other bodies. 1880 Günther Introd. Study Fishes 461 A somewhat ingenuous way of catching sleeping turtles by means of a Sucking-fish held by a ring fastened round its tail. 1884 Longman's Mag. Mar. 524 Few sharks are caught in tropical seas that have not one or more sucking fish attached to them. |
b. Applied to various other fishes, e.g. the Cornish sucker, the lump-sucker.
| 1776 Pennant Brit. Zool. III. 120 Lesser Sucking Fish... Lepadogaster. 1867 Chambers' Encycl. IX. 181/1 Sucking Fish, a name sometimes given..to fishes of the family Discoboli. |