What is "buffalo fish"

Sucker \Suck"er\ (s[u^]k"[~e]r), n.

1. One who, or that which, sucks; esp., one of the organs by which certain animals, as the octopus and remora, adhere to other bodies.

2. A suckling; a sucking animal.
   --Beau. & Fl.

3. The embolus, or bucket, of a pump; also, the valve of a pump basket.
   --Boyle.

4. A pipe through which anything is drawn.

5. A small piece of leather, usually round, having a string attached to the center, which, when saturated with water and pressed upon a stone or other body having a smooth surface, adheres, by reason of the atmospheric pressure, with such force as to enable a considerable weight to be thus lifted by the string; -- used by children as a plaything.

6. (Bot.) A shoot from the roots or lower part of the stem of a plant; -- so called, perhaps, from diverting nourishment from the body of the plant.

7. (Zo["o]l.)

   1. Any one of numerous species of North American fresh-water cyprinoid fishes of the family Catostomid[ae]; so called because the lips are protrusile. The flesh is coarse, and they are of little value as food. The most common species of the Eastern United States are the northern sucker ( Catostomus Commersoni), the white sucker ( C. teres), the hog sucker ( C. nigricans), and the chub, or sweet sucker ( Erimyzon sucetta). Some of the large Western species are called buffalo fish, red horse, black horse, and suckerel.

   2. The remora.

   3. The lumpfish.

   4. The hagfish, or myxine.

   5. A California food fish ( Menticirrus undulatus) closely allied to the kingfish (a); -- called also bagre.

8. A parasite; a sponger. See def. 6, above.

   They who constantly converse with men far above their estates shall reap shame and loss thereby; if thou payest nothing, they will count thee a sucker, no branch.
   --Fuller.

9. A hard drinker; a soaker. [Slang]

10. A greenhorn; someone easily cheated, gulled, or deceived.

11. A nickname applied to a native of Illinois. [U. S.]

12. A person strongly attracted to something; -- usually used with for; as, he's a sucker for tall blondes.

    11. Any thing or person; -- usually implying annoyance or dislike; as, I went to change the blade and cut my finger on the sucker. [Slang]

    Carp sucker, Cherry sucker, etc. See under Carp, Cherry, etc.

    Sucker fish. See Sucking fish, under Sucking.

    Sucker rod, a pump rod. See under Pump.

    Sucker tube (Zo["o]l.), one of the external ambulacral tubes of an echinoderm, -- usually terminated by a sucker and used for locomotion. Called also sucker foot. See Spatangoid.

buffalofish \buffalofish\, buffalo fish \buffalo fish\n. (Zo["o]l.)

1. any of several large carplike North American fish.

2. (Zo["o]l.) Any of several large fresh-water fishes of the family Catostomid[ae] (also called suckers) of the Mississippi valley. The red-mouthed or brown ( Ictiobus bubalus), the big-mouthed buffalofish ( Ictiobus cyrinellus, formerly called Bubalichthys urus), the black buffalofish ( Ictiobus niger), and the small-mouthed buffalofish ( Ictiobus bubalus, formerly called Bubalichthys altus), are among the more important species used as food.

n. Any of several North American freshwater sucker fishes of the genus ''Ictiobus'', similar to carp but having a humped back.

n. any of several large suckers of the Mississippi valley [syn: buffalofish]