# Is the origin of the phrase "suck it up" referring to WWII pilots? - Tags: language - Score: 17 - Views: 7,350 - Answers: 1 - Asked by: Jeremy French (660 rep) - Asked on: Apr 29, 2016 - Last active: Aug 26, 2018 - License: CC BY-SA 3.0 --- ## Question I was reading [this New Statesman article](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/04/when-it-comes-labour-and-anti-semitism-there-s-only-so-much-left-wing-jew-can) and was surprised to read this: > The origin of the phrase “suck it up” is quite gross. Allegedly, it’s what WWII pilots were instructed to do if they vomited into their oxygen masks, to avoid drowning in their own puke. I can find little evidence to support this. There is some [talk on wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:suck_it_up) and a [related question on the English Language and Usage Stack Exchange](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/32560/what-does-suck-it-up-and-go-mean). This [usage data](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=suck+it+up&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csuck%20it%20up%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csuck%20it%20up%3B%2Cc1) seems to contradict it as there is very little change