the.com/sinker
A weight whose entire career goal is to sink without ever getting credit.
means A weight—usually lead—attached to a fishing line to pull the bait down and keep it there.
from Simply agentive: 'sink' plus '-er,' the suffix English slaps on anything that does a job. First recorded as fishing-tackle jargon in the 1800s, though the plain logic of the word is ancient—if it sinks, call it a sinker. Also picked up slang lives along the way, from a leaden doughnut to a baseball pitch that dives at the last second, all leaning on the same simple promise: this thing goes down.
- baseball use
- A pitch that drops hard right before the plate
- fishing use
- Lead weight that drags your hook to the bottom
- shared logic
- Both exist purely to defeat buoyancy on command
- idiom bonus
- Hook, line, and sinker means fully, embarrassingly fooled