Word.ws English Dictionary

licks one's wounds

licks one's wounds is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 licks one's wounds

What is licks one's wounds the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Licks one's wounds is the third-person singular simple present indicative of lick one's wounds.

Words near licks one's wounds in the dictionary

  1. licks of paint
  2. licks of the tarbrush
  3. licks of work
  4. licks one's chops
  5. licks one's lips
  6. licks one's wounds
  7. licks out
  8. licks someone's ass
  9. licks someone's balls
  10. licks someone's boots
  11. licks the birse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: licks 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: “licks one's wounds.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/licks_one%27s_wounds. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.