Sucks mud

Posted by Brian from Shawnee on January 21, 2010 at 14:27

In Reply to: Sucks mud posted by David on January 21, 2010 at 12:36:

: The phrase "that sucks" or the longer expression "that sucks mud" really has very little to do with sexual connotations the way so many seem to think, the link only being inferred after the event by those who guess and are not familiar with US Navy terms of years gone by.
: It's originally a US Navy term, I believe from the Korean war. A type of river boat was used in shallow rivers that used an impeller rather than a propeller, sucking the water in and blowing it out the aft of the boat, not too much unlike personal watercraft (PWC) do today (i.e. Seadoos). If the water became really too shallow even for these boats they sucked mud instead of water, hence the phrase "she's sucking mud" or "she/ it sucks". I don't know, but I can guess that even PWC today have this problem with sucking mud in the wrong type of water.
: You see a great example of this direct use in Star Trek TOS when the comment is made "bring her up Scottie she's beginning to suck mud!" Gene Rodenberry was very familiar with US nautical terms.

Dude if you're gonna invoke Star Trek (The Original Series), or any part of the canon for that matter, you better get your facts straight. Roddenberry was a pilot in the Air Force, and was not the Navy as you imply. And you should cite the episode and the character who supposedly said that to engineer Scott. It certainly doesn't sound like Kirk, and can't possibly have been Spock. And why would anyone ask Scotty to "bring her up" instead of Sulu or Chekov?

You may have confused Scotty with the legendary Clancy of "Shut her down Clancy, she's a-pumpin' mud" fame. As far as I can tell this phrase is from an old computer error message, possibly from the days when only computer people saw computers and their error messages.