In response to our earlier conversation about the phrase to lick the cat over, meaning to repeat a laborious process, many listeners say they use the phrase lick the calf over to mean the same thing. Among the writers who have used it this way: Zora Neale Hurston. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Lick the Calf Over”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
A few weeks ago, we had that call from Deborah in Gates, North Carolina, and she was asking about the phrase that her husband used, I don’t want to have to lick the cat over.
Oh, yes.
Remember that?
And it means you didn’t want to have to do something over.
Right.
Start again.
Right.
And it was puzzling, and we really puzzled over it.
And I don’t think we gave her a good answer.
You don’t?
I don’t.
I think there’s a second answer.
There is a second answer.
Or about a better answer.
I think it’s a better answer.
Let’s hear it.
Well, for me, it was this forehead-smacking moment because we got a lot of emails like this one from Joy Beard who said, my husband’s an old Tennessee country boy who says he knows the phrase as lick the calf over.
Oh, nice.
And that’s when I started pounding my head because, of course, lick the calf over.
You know, a little newborn calf comes out.
Mama comes over and gives it some love.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and she’s licking the membrane off, and it’s a long, involved process.
Zora Neale Hurston used it that way, lick the calf over.
And I found lots more references to that phrase than lick the cat over.
So it’s C-A-L-F and not C-A-T.
What’s interesting about this is that both forms exist simultaneously and side by side and have abundant presence out there, right?
Well, I think the calf one is much more abundant, and it makes more sense to me.
It makes more sense. It certainly does.
But cats do a lot of licking.
Cats do.
So you can see why there’s a reanalysis.
Somebody might hear cat instead of calf and think, oh, yeah, cats do licking.
They’re known for licking.
But I was so happy that our listeners helped us out on that one.
That was a good one.
Well, that’s a good moment when you get new facts.
And our listeners, boy, you guys are field workers out there.
Smart bunch.
We take what you send us.
We use it to make the show.
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Lick the cat over. When I was very little, maybe 6 years old, we went to visit my father’s parents in Plant City, Florida, and my grandmother served something my mother never had – liver. I understood her to say “cat’s liver”. I remember saying to her “cat’s liver”? in disbelief, and she said yes. You can imagine my distress.