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lick

UK/lɪk/US/lɪk/
verbB14 meaningsVery common — you will meet it every day · #2,325 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: licking, licks, licked

To lick is to run your tongue over something. An ice cream on a hot day, a stamp, a dog licking your hand, a child licking the spoon clean before anyone can stop her.

There is a noun too: give it a lick, and a lick of paint, which means a quick thin coat rather than a proper job. Flames lick, moving over a surface the way a tongue does, and waves lick the side of a boat. In music a lick is a short showy phrase, the kind a guitarist drops into a solo. Two informal senses are worth recognising without writing: lick can mean to beat someone in a fight or a game, and to lick your wounds is to go off quietly and recover after a defeat.

Definitions of lick

  1. 1verblickTo move your tongue over the surface of something.B1

    “The cat licked the last of the milk out of the saucer.”

  2. 2verbflamesOf flames or water, to move lightly over a surface.C1

    “Flames licked the underside of the roof.”

  3. 3nounmovementA movement of the tongue over something, or a very small amount of something.B1

    “The hallway needs a lick of paint before we put the house up for sale.”

  4. 4nounshortA short phrase played on a guitar or another instrument.C1

    “He plays the same blues lick in every solo he has ever taken.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

Phrases it lives in

  • a lick of paint — a quick, thin coat of paint
  • lick your wounds — to go away quietly and recover after a defeat
  • lick something into shape — to get something into working order by hard work

Where it comes from

Lick is very old and barely changed: Old English liccian, from Proto-Germanic *likkōną, from a Proto-Indo-European root *leyǵʰ- that already meant "to lick". Its cousins line up across Europe, in German lecken, Dutch likken, French lécher and Italian leccare. The violent sense, licking someone in a fight, is a mystery, and no other Germanic language did the same thing.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *leyǵʰ- — to lick

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *likkōną — to lick

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *likkōn

  4. Old English

    liccian

  5. Middle English

    likken

  6. English, today

    lick

From Middle English likken, from Old English liccian, from Proto-West Germanic likkōn, from Proto-Germanic likkōną (“to lick”), from Proto-Indo-European leyǵʰ- (“to lick”). Sense evolution towards violence unclear; not paralleled in any other Germanic language. 2 Cognate with Dutch lekken, likken (“to lick”), German lecken (“to lick”), wym łaekia, łakia, łȧḱkja (“to lick”), Yiddish לעקן (“to lick”), French lécher (“to lick”), fur lecâ (“to lick”), Italian leccare (“to lick”), lmo leccà (“to lick”), Norman litchi (“to lick”), Occitan lecar (“to lick”); also Faroese and Icelandic sleikja (“to lick”), Breton leat (“to lick”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic ligh (“to lick”), Welsh llyfu (“to lick”), Latin lingō (“to lick”), Ancient Greek λείχω (“to lick up”), Latvian làizît (“to lick”), Lithuanian laižyti (“to lick”), Bulgarian ли́жа (“to lick”), Czech lízat (“to lick”), mk лиже (“to lick”), Polish lizać (“to lick”), Russian лиза́ть (“to lick”), Serbo-Croatian ли́зати, lízati (“to lick”), Slovene lizati (“to lick”), Ukrainian лиза́ти (“to lick”), Armenian լիզել (“to lick”), ckb لستن (“to lick”), kmr alastin, alêstin, alistin, alîstin (“to lick”), Persian لیسیدن (“to lick”), Sanskrit लिह्, रिह् (“to lick; to eat”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 1 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

lick in the wild

  • For musicians, learning a lick is usually a form of imitation.

    Lick (music)

  • Mineral licks can be naturally occurring or artificial (such as blocks of salt that farmers place in pastures for livestock to lick).

    Mineral lick

  • The creek's name was originally given by Native Americans, who had noticed the animals that frequented the creek to lick its black-colored salt stones.

    Blacklick Creek (Ohio)

  • Dogs, cats, small rodents, horses, and primates, including humans, all lick wounds.

    Wound licking

  • In dogs, it results typically from the dog's urge to lick the lower portion of one of their legs.

    Lick granuloma

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • lickspittle