embrace the suck

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embrace the suck (third-person singular simple present embraces the suck, present participle embracing the suck, simple past and past participle embraced the suck)

1. (military, slang) To consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.
   • 2013, Brett Stewart, 7 Weeks to a 10K, →ISBN:

     So go ahead and embrace the suck of the first mile or so, you'll be through it soon enough.

   • 2014, Hailey Dollar, A Girl Lost to the World and Found in the Art of War, →ISBN:

     But I embraced the suck and shelled out three thousand dollars for something I didn't want and something that would give me nothing to show for.

   • 2015, Rob Roy, Chris Lawson, The Navy SEAL Art of War, →ISBN:

     If you can embrace the suck, you can overcome almost any obstacle or difficulty.

   • 2015, Rufi Thorpe, The Girls from Corona Del Mar, →ISBN, page 71:

     "I'm sorry, girl. I don't know what to say. Just: embrace the suck.” Lorrie Ann understood that this was soldier slang and that it meant something along the lines of “The world is shitty, but we've got to deal with it.”

   • 2013 December 13, Ben Zimmer, “Nancy Pelosi Told House Democrats to "Embrace the Suck." Where Did That Phrase Come From?”, in Slate‎:

     Nancy Pelosi used some colorful language to cajole her fellow House Democrats into accepting the compromise budget deal. As first reported by Politico, she told them to "embrace the suck." ... [W]hen did military types start talking about embracing the suck? Capt. Benjamin Tupper, who contibuted to Slate 's military blog The Sandbox, remembers first hearing "embrace the suck" in 2001, soon after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. "The spirits of the American infantrymen were undeterred," Tupper wrote in his book Greetings from Afghanistan. "Their Zen-like approach was to ' embrace the suck,' a strategy of treating the hardships as friends, not enemies, and driving on."