The terms self-licking ice cream cone, self-eating watermelon, and self-licking lollipop all refer to organizations, such as governmental bureaucracies, that appear to exist solely for the sake of perpetuating themselves. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Self-Licking Organizations”
A long time ago on my old double tongue dictionary, I did an entry for self-licking ice cream cone.
Do you remember this?
I do.
So a self-licking ice cream, this is used in government and like in D.C. And kind of where it crosses over into the military for a project that exists only to support itself.
Right.
Yeah.
So it’s a thing that only exists in order to sustain its own existence.
Christy French posted something on our Facebook page asking if anyone knew the term self-eating watermelon.
It turns out it’s the same thing.
Yeah.
So it’s a variation of the same thing.
And there’s also a self-licking lollipop.
Oh, okay.
All kind of used as a derogatory way to talk about something like there’s no end results to that project except for funding that project.
We know projects like that.
We know projects.
Yes, I assume Washington has a lot of them.
Thanks, Christy, for turning me on to that because I didn’t know about that variation.
I really appreciate it.
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