Word.ws English Dictionary

lick someone's boots

lick someone's boots verb: to try hard to please someone.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To try hard to please someone.
    • “Far-right politicians in primaries are licking the boots of gun lobbyists,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts told Rolling Stone in an email on Tuesday. They’ll certainly continue to do so once in office.2022 April 13, Ryan Bort, “The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns”, in Rolling Stone

Synonyms of lick someone's boots

Forms of lick someone's boots

third-person singular presentlicks someone's boots
present participlelicking someone's boots
past participlelicked someone's boots
pastlicked someone's boots

Questions about lick someone's boots

What does lick someone's boots mean?
Lick someone's boots means to try hard to please someone.
What part of speech is lick someone's boots?
Lick someone's boots is a verb.
What is the past tense of lick someone's boots?
The past tense of lick someone's boots is licked someone's boots.

Words near lick someone's boots in the dictionary

  1. lick one's lips
  2. lick one's wounds
  3. lick out
  4. lick someone's ass
  5. lick someone's balls
  6. lick someone's boots
  7. lick spout
  8. lick spouts
  9. lick the birse
  10. lick the dust
  11. lick the pants off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lick someone's boots (page history and authors). 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.

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