Word.ws English Dictionary

licking one's wounds

licking one's wounds is the present participle and gerund 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 licking one's wounds

What is licking one's wounds the present participle and gerund of?
Licking one's wounds is the present participle and gerund of lick one's wounds.

Words near licking one's wounds in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: licking 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “licking one's wounds.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/licking_one%27s_wounds. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.