A Lick and a Promise

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Dorothy from Fort Worth.

Dorothy from Fort Worth. Welcome to the show.

Hi. Well, thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I used a phrase the other day, a lick and a promise.

And I got such a strong reaction from a friend, I thought, am I using that right?

We had been working together on a project, and with some other girls too.

And it required some detail.

And the one friend, not the one I was talking to, but she said, you know, I’d had this done by now if I was heading this up.

You know, I’d whip this together and we’d be done.

And so I said to the friend I was talking to, yeah, she’d just give it a lick and a promise.

And my friend just cracked up.

She said she’d never heard it before.

And I thought it was fairly common.

Yeah, I would think so too.

By lick and a promise, you meant something kind of cursory or just sort of slapped together.

Yes, yes. She’s not going to give it the attention that it really deserves and all the detail.

And I had even asked my mom about it.

And she said, oh, yeah, I’ve used it all my life.

You know, if I’m going to vacuum or whatever and it’s not cleaning day, then I’m just going to quickly, you know, do it and take care of the real job later.

Right, right.

That’s how I understand it as well, exactly like that.

Yeah, and it just means a slight bit of effort.

I mean, a lick is very slight, right?

It’s brief and doesn’t do a whole lot.

And I think there’s also the idea of sort of a hasty kind of, you know, like when a child, what do they call that?

A schoolboy’s wipe?

A schoolboy’s wash.

Schoolboy’s wash.

Schoolboy’s wash.

You know, where you just sort of clean yourself in a very cursory way.

Right, right.

You’ve got a cow lick sticking up, so you lick your hand and wipe it down so it’ll stay in place.

It’s just as long as it takes to get out the door, right?

Well, is that where the lick comes from?

Because that’s the part that really threw me.

Because after she laughed so hard, I thought, well, you know, it made me second-guess myself.

And I thought, well, that does sound strange, doesn’t it?

Yeah, well, the earliest sense I’ve seen of it is a slight and hasty wash.

Okay.

But I think there is also that metaphorical sense of just dabbing, you know, doing something very quickly.

Yeah, a lick can be like a single stroke or a single hit or a single swipe.

It doesn’t have to necessarily be something that you do with the tongue.

I mean, traditionally, obviously today in modern English, a lick is almost always something you do with the tongue.

Right.

But historically, it didn’t have to be.

Right, like I haven’t done a lick of work all day.

Exactly like that, right?

Right, yeah.

Or a musician might play a lick on his guitar.

You know, it’s kind of like a quick one-off thing he’s doing there.

Yeah.

So I did use it correctly, then.

You did.

Absolutely.

You were great.

And it’s a good expression, and I like it.

There’s nothing wrong with it.

Yeah, but it’s one of those expressions where you start looking at it, and then you think, what does that mean?

Yeah, licking a promise.

It’s so strange in the promise part.

Well, you promise to do more later.

Right.

You promise to finish it later.

You’re like, well, you know, the guests are going to be here in a half hour.

I’ve got time just to run the sweeper in one room and make sure the toilet bowl is clean, and then I promise to do it all after they leave, right?

Okay.

Well, thank you so much for calling, Dorothy.

Well, thank you.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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