licking
Americannoun
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lickings
plural
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Informal.
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a beating or thrashing.
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a reversal or disappointment; defeat or setback.
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the act of a person or thing that licks.
noun
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a beating
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a defeat
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of licking
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at lick, -ing 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Beware of lilies, which are toxic to cats; even chewing the leaves or licking pollen off their fur while grooming can be fatal.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
And, notably, they eat Cane’s, whether it’s buying entire orders of just Texas toast or dunking their entire hand into a fountain cup of Cane’s Sauce and licking it off their fingers.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026
And it isn’t just SpaceX, but also Anthropic and OpenAI and the unceasing chatter and licking of chops over the mind-bending explosion of intergenerational wealth anticipated by their pending IPOs, that gives me pause.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
She was laser-focused on licking organic peanut butter off a mat, a treat reserved for her biweekly acupuncture sessions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 17, 2026
As the sky grew dark, the exhausted Americans sat on the ground gulping water from canteens and licking melted chocolate bars from the wrappers.
From "Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War" by Steve Sheinkin
After all the investments they had made into her business, she said they were left with the "lickings of a dog" and felt it was "a kick in the teeth".
From BBC ● Jan. 18, 2024
Two years later, at the polls, it took one of the most surprising lickings in U.S. political history.
From Time Magazine Archive
The G.O.P. had taken two good lickings in Philadelphia in 1951 and 1952, and was more or less resigned to another.
From Time Magazine Archive
In one tournament after another, Tony took embarrassing lickings.
From Time Magazine Archive
Even a private secretary had learned to control his tones and guard his features and betray no joy over the "lickings" of an enemy -- in the enemy's presence.
From The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
