So Sus! Sussing Out Suss

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Cheryl. I’m from Fort Worth, Texas.

And my and my boyfriend are curious about what it means when you say, I’m going to suss it out. We’re going to suss this out.

Ooh, what was happening that you needed to suss things out?

Well, so he learned this from a friend he was working with on a radio show, and any time they would have to figure something out, his friend would say, well, we need to suss this out.

What does it mean?

Well, we think it means to figure it out, work it out, or get to the bottom of it.

Sounds about right.

Right, Martha?

Yeah, it sure does.

And how are you spelling it?

I guess, you know, we weren’t really, since we’ve never, I would say S-U-S-S.

-huh, -huh.

Yep, that’s how you usually see it.

And do you have any suspicions about where it might have come from?

I don’t.

We have no idea.

That’s why we were like, let’s ask them, see what they say.

I was trying to give you a hint there when I asked about suspicions.

Oh, I totally missed that.

Yeah, because to suss out is slang shortening of the verb to suspect.

And it comes from British police jargon from about the middle of the last century.

In Britain, you might talk about picking somebody up on sus or talk about a suspect being a sus.

And to sus out is simply to, as you said, investigate or figure out.

But it comes from the verb to suspect.

Oh, my gosh.

It’s British.

Originally, yeah.

And I never heard it very much until the last 10 or 15 years or so.

It’s interesting that you mentioned, was it a radio journalist who used that?

It was an engineer, an audio engineer, actually.

Okay, okay.

Because it was something that I came upon first in journalism.

You know, an editor would say, go suss out this question or something like that.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I had never heard it before.

And then he used to say it, my boyfriend and I would just kind of make fun of him.

And then now we both do it, but kind of mockingly.

Well, now you can tell him you sussed out the answer.

Exactly.

Exactly, yes.

Well, that’s good to know.

Thank you.

Now I know that I’m actually saying something that really does come from somewhere.

Yes, you do indeed.

So there you go.

Well, good.

Thank you so much.

All right.

We’re glad to help.

Thanks.

Yeah.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

So the verb to sus goes back to the 1950s, but the noun sus is older, 1930s.

It can mean suspicion or suspect, right?

So it could be a sus.

Yes.

I’ve got a sus that he’s a sus.

I’ve got a suspicion that he’s a suspect.

Yeah.

And that version is often S-U-S rather than S-U-S-S.

But yeah, sus out.

Well, ring-a-ding-ding.

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