Read This Lickety Split

Sam Leith is the erudite book reviewer for The Spectator magazine and, despite being a high-flying media Big Foot, he’s an awfully nice fellow to boot. When I wrote asking him to review my memoir, I Know This Looks Bad, he let me down with the greatest gentility and charm.

Anywhoo, in a piece today for the magazine, Mr Leith uses the work lick to mean a slight amount (“Everyone with a lick of sense…”). Anybody with a lick of sense knows lick is a remarkably agile word.

It can mean a happy greeting from your pooch, a missive with a marriage proposal sent to your intended (“a lick and a promise”), what a US presidential candidate may be doing this week (“licking one’s wounds”), a guitar riff (“I always meant to learn that lick”), what one does to the middle of an Oreo, to defeat a foe (“Our fellows will lick the whole crowd”) and the final effort at a task (“last licks”).

In the middle of World War II, lick confused the bejabbers out of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

FDR and Winston were forging the great friendship and political alliance that would see them through the toughest years of the conflict. It was important to both men that their singlemindedness be made manifest to the American public so reporters were summoned to the White House. A huge number turned up to hear the first press event by the British leader.

All was going well till one journalist asked Churchill, “How long do you think it’s going to take to lick these guys?” Winnie never heard that word used in that way and he froze, a blank stare on this face. Moments passed. Things began to get awkward.

Finally, Roosevelt stepped into explain the particular meaning - which resulted in huge guffaws among the press corps.

After rather a large struggle, the Allies did in fact lick the Germans.