Word.ws English Dictionary

licked one's wounds

licked one's wounds is the simple past and past participle of lick one's wounds.

Meaning of lick one's wounds

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To withdraw temporarily while recovering from a defeat; to recuperate.
    • Prevented by internal and external influences, this ideal of placing the sovereignty in the hands of the people was not carried out immediately after the establishment of the Republic of China. With the changes of time, particularly with the relocation of the ROC government to Taiwan, we have...1996 May, Lee Teng-hui, “Political Reforms”, in Peace Through Democratic Reforms, Taipei: Wen Ying Tang Press Inc., →ISBN, →OCLC, page 11

Questions about licked one's wounds

What is licked one's wounds the simple past and past participle of?
Licked one's wounds is the simple past and past participle of lick one's wounds.

Words near licked one's wounds in the dictionary

  1. licked
  2. licked clean
  3. licked into shape
  4. licked one's chops
  5. licked one's lips
  6. licked one's wounds
  7. licked out
  8. licked someone's ass
  9. licked someone's balls
  10. licked someone's boots
  11. licked the birse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: licked one's wounds (page history and authors); lick one's wounds (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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