lickpenny
lickpenny noun: something that devours or absorbs lots of money; something expensive.
Noun
lickpenny (plural lickpennies)
- Something that devours or absorbs lots of money; something expensive.
- For well London Lykke-peny for ones and eye, / For lake of money I may not spede.15th century, anonymous author, London Lickpenny
- […] at Smyrna, you talked of a lawsuit—law is a lickpenny, Mr Tyrrel—no counsellor like the pound in purse.1823, Sir Walter Scott, Saint Ronan's Well
- A miserly person.
- The Scotsmen, being lickpennies by nature, rode off without paying their bill!2014, Gavin Wood, The Fate of the Jacobite Grenadiers
Adjective
lickpenny (comparative more lickpenny, superlative most lickpenny)
- Expensive.
- His pouch was now all void and empty, his future years were like to be sour, thoughty, and woe-begone, and himself a cumberworld, unsicker of his scarce and slender livelihood in lickpenny London, forced to beg, steal, or starve, and gaping after honest death.1894, James Hamilton Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth, volume 2, pages 22–23
- Synonyms:
- expensive
Synonyms of lickpenny
Forms of lickpenny
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | lickpennies |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more lickpenny |
| superlative | most lickpenny |
Origin of lickpenny
From lick + penny.
Questions about lickpenny
- What does lickpenny mean?
- Lickpenny means something that devours or absorbs lots of money; something expensive.
- What part of speech is lickpenny?
- Lickpenny can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of lickpenny?
- The plural of lickpenny is lickpennies.
Words near lickpenny in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lickpenny (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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Cite this entry: “lickpenny.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lickpenny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.