Word.ws English Dictionary

lick

UK/lɪk/

lick verb: to stroke with the tongue.

lick: to stroke with the tongue
Image: Mike Baird from Morro Bay, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

lick (third-person singular simple present licks, present participle licking, simple past and past participle licked)

  1. (transitive) To stroke with the tongue.
    • The cat licked its fur.
  2. (transitive) To lap; to take in with the tongue.
    • She licked the last of the honey off the spoon before washing it.
    • Jim closed his eyes and licked his vanilla ice cream cone.
  3. (colloquial, dated) To beat with repeated blows.
    • "What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school! Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl -- they're so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. […]"1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XX, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 163
    Synonyms:
    clobber
  4. (colloquial, dated) To defeat decisively, particularly in a fight.
    • My dad can lick your dad.
  5. (colloquial, dated) To overcome.
    • I think I can lick this.
    • This week, diskery and phono manufacturer spokesmen sounded tempering notes of caution as they discussed the many problems still to be licked in developing truly compatible stereo with fidelity standards equal to those now available in monaural disks.1957 December 30, Ren Grevatt, “Concensus Tabs Stereo Disk Still in Research Stage: Diskery and Phono Toppers Sound Tempering Notes of Caution”, in Billboard, page 11
  6. (slang, vulgar) To perform cunnilingus.
  7. (colloquial) To do anything partially.
  8. (waves etc.) To lap.
    • Now, in this decadent age the art of fire-making had been altogether forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter XI, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC

Noun (1)

lick (plural licks)

  1. The act of licking; a stroke of the tongue.
    • The cat gave its fur a lick.
  2. The amount of some substance obtainable with a single lick.
    • Give me a lick of ice cream.
  3. A quick and careless application of anything, as if by a stroke of the tongue.
    • a lick of paint
    • to put on colours with a lick of the brush
  4. A place where animals lick minerals from the ground.
    • The birds gathered at the clay lick.
  5. A small watercourse or ephemeral stream. It ranks between a rill and a stream.
    • We used to play in the lick.
  6. (colloquial) A stroke or blow.
    • Hit that wedge a good lick with the sledgehammer.
    • I went in big licks, and, although it was a good-sized pile, I chopped it all up before he got back at night.1891, Cecil Roberts, Adrift in America: Or, Work and Adventure in the States, page 148
  7. (colloquial) A small amount; a whit.
    • You don't have a lick of sense.
    • I didn't do a lick of work today.
  8. (informal) An attempt at something.
    • Well, my album did well, but "Ruby" was a timely song and that wasn't the time for it to step out. […] Then Waylon Jennings took a lick at it on an album, and my old buddy Roger Miller covered it, too, in his album. And although they're outstanding artists, nothing much happened with the song.1984, Mel Tillis, Walter Wager, Stutterin' Boy, page 170
  9. A short motif.
    • There are some really good blues licks in this solo.
  10. (informal) A rate of speed. (Always qualified by good, fair, or a similar adjective.)
    • The bus was travelling at a good lick when it swerved and left the road.
    • Dandy Marx, a perfect gentleman in the true sense of the word, now drives forth under single harness ; whereas “once upon a time,” he rushed over the ground at a “big lick,” reigning his four beautiful roans, and continually kicking up an extra excitement among the “fashionables.”1852, John Denison Vose, Fresh Leaves from the Diary of a Broadway Dandy, page 109
  11. (slang) An act of cunnilingus.
    • You up for a lick tonight?

Noun (2)

lick (plural licks)

  1. An instance or opportunity to earn money fast, usually by illegal means, thus a heist, drug deal etc. or its victim; mostly used in phrasal verbs: hit a lick, hit licks
    • Bitch, pig, pull out with the stick / everything I hit like a lick / We don’t miss2018 July 27, “Strip Talk”, Marty Mula (lyrics), 1:52
    • You see a lick and you rob him / I see a lick then I stop on the block and I pause him2019 January 31, Lil Darkie (prod. Wendigo), “rap music” (1:55 from the start)

Proper noun capitalized: Lick

Lick (plural Licks)

  1. A surname.

lick meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

lick in Hindi

to stroke with the tongue
चाटना cāṭnā

lick in Tamil

to stroke with the tongue
நக்கு nakku

lick in Marathi

to stroke with the tongue
चाटणे ċāṭṇe

lick in Urdu

to stroke with the tongue
چاٹنا cāṭnā
More languagesFewer languages
lick in Bengali
চাটা caṭa
lick in Telugu
నాకు nāku
lick in Malayalam
നക്കുക nakkuka
lick in Kannada
ನೆಕ್ಕು ನಾಲಿಗೆಯಿಂದ ಸವರು, ನಂಜು, ನಕ್ಕು, ಸ್ಪರ್ಧೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಸೋಲಿಸು
lick in Punjabi
ਚੱਟਣਾ caṭṭaṇā
lick in Gujarati
ચાટવું cāṭvũ
lick in Odia
ଚାଟନ୍ତୁ
lick in Sanskrit
लिहति lihati
lick in Assamese
চেলেক selek, চেলেকা seleka
lick in Nepali
चाटना
lick in Pashto
څټل caṭᶕl
lick in Tagalog
pagdila
lick in Arabic
لَحَسَ laḥasa, لَعِقَ laʕiqa
lick in Malay
jilat
lick in Indonesian
jilat
lick in Persian
لیسیدن lisidan, لیس lis, لشتن leštan
lick in Thai
เลีย liia
lick in Vietnamese
liếm
lick in Myanmar
လျက် lyak

Examples of lick in a sentence

  • When ſly Jemmy Twitcher had ſmugg'd up his face / With a lick of court white waſh,1774, Thomas Gray, “The Candidate”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), Strawberry Hill Press:
  • JAEKAE: Free all my G’s, they got locked for licks.2020 January 9, “1AM”, in Nasty, performed by Jaykae and Kida Kudz:
  • Remember on my first lick, got lost in a house / Had to dip, bro, quick, before the dogs came out2020 April 7, “Did Alotta”, Kai Bandz (lyrics), 1:07:

All 40 example sentences with lick

Synonyms of lick

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of lick

Forms of lick

Verb
third-person singular presentlicks
present participlelicking
past participlelicked
pastlicked
Noun
plurallicks
Proper noun
pluralLicks

Past tense of lick: licked

Plural of lick: licks

Origin of 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. Cognates Cognate with Dutch lekken, likken (“to lick”), German lecken (“to lick”), Vilamovian łaekia, łakia, łȧḱkja (“to lick”), Yiddish לעקן (lekn, “to lick”), French lécher (“to lick”), Friulian lecâ (“to lick”), Italian leccare (“to lick”), Lombard 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 (leíkhō, “to lick up”), Latvian làizît (“to lick”), Lithuanian laižyti (“to lick”), Bulgarian ли́жа (líža, “to lick”), Czech lízat (“to lick”), Macedonian лиже (liže, “to lick”), Polish lizać (“to lick”), Russian лиза́ть (lizátʹ, “to lick”), Serbo-Croatian ли́зати, lízati (“to lick”), Slovene lizati (“to lick”), Ukrainian лиза́ти (lyzáty, “to lick”), Armenian լիզել (lizel, “to lick”), Central Kurdish لستن (listin, “to...

Back-formation from hit a lick, which see. Ultimately from liquor.

North German surname, from a short/pet form of a name related to Leute (“people”); compare Leopold.

Words formed from lick

Phrases with lick

4 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with lick

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lick

What does lick mean?
Lick means to stroke with the tongue.
What is lick in Hindi?
Lick in Hindi is चाटना (cāṭnā). See Lick meaning in Hindi.
How do you use lick in a sentence?
When ſly Jemmy Twitcher had ſmugg'd up his face / With a lick of court white waſh,
What part of speech is lick?
Lick can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lick?
Lick is pronounced /lɪk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of lick?
The past tense of lick is licked.

Words near lick in the dictionary

  1. licitation
  2. licitations
  3. licitly
  4. licitness
  5. Licius
  6. lick
  7. lick and a promise
  8. lick and stick
  9. lick clean
  10. lick into shape
  11. lick job

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lick (page history and authors); Lick (page history and authors); നക്കുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); lick (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਚੱਟਣਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ચાટવું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); lick (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lick (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lick.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lick.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lick. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.