lickpot

English

Etymology

From Middle English likpot; equivalent to lick +‎ pot. Possibly from the act of using a finger to clean a pot after eating.

Noun

lickpot (plural lickpots)

1. (archaic, childish) The forefinger. [14th–15th c.]

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:index finger

   Coordinate term: thumbkin

   • 1820, The Edinburgh Review - Volume 34, page 156:

     Fife-men and pipers braw, Merry deils, tak them a', Gown, lace, and livery — lickpot and ladle ; Jockey shall wear the hood, Jenny the sark of God — For codpiece and petticoat, dishclout and daidle.

   • 1955, Hans Christian Andersen, Six fairy tales by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen:

     Everyone said, "Oh," and held up the finger we call "lickpot," and nodded his head.

   • 1970, Harriette Louisa Simpson Arnow, The weedkiller's daughter, page 356:

     No, only little Peter Playman; dear Thumbkin, Lickpot, and Longman were grabbing hardness under the gray cloth, shaping the flat oblong of hardness.

   • 2008, Peter C. D. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, page 214:

     The use of the index finger to scoop the remaining juices from the cooking pot up to the lips gave it the finely appropriate name of 'the lickpot.'

2. An untrustworthy sycophant.

   Synonyms: lickspittle, sycophant, toady; see also Thesaurus:sycophant

   • 1896, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Grey Man - Volume 1, page 114:

     . And the message that came was by the mouth of a kind of jackal or lickpot of John Dick's — who, for reasons of his own, hated me, chiefly because I took no share in the foulness of him and his subservient crew.

   • 1911, Maurice Hewlett, The Song of Renny, page 215:

     Maybe ye'll not have another chance before the gallows gets ye ! Off with ye now, for a dirty fingered, lickpot sneak, or I'll break the fiddle over the shoulders of ye!"

   • 1929, Anatole France, Rabelais, page 98:

     Piso is a peasant, Cyrus a cowherd, Brutus and Cassius landsurveyors, Demosthenes a vine-dresser, Fabius a threader of beads, Artaxerxes a ropemaker, Æneas a miller, Achilles a scurvy pate, Agamemnon a lickpot, Ulysses a haymower, Nestor a beggar, Ancus Martius a shiptrimmer. . . .

   • 1932, Richard Dehan, Dead Pearls: A Novel of the Great Wide West, page 195:

     And, being no lickpot, would be left to watch the breakfast-porridge while the Sisters and Catechists went to Mass with the pupils of the school, on the benches of which young Boengabadu maintained isolated pre-eminence as a genuine Aboriginal converted from utterest heathenry, by the efforts of Pere St. Xavier and Pere Amable-Marie.

Translations

the forefinger — see also forefinger

• Danish: slikkepot c
• Dutch: likkepot (nl) m
• Norwegian: slikkepott m

Further reading

• “lickpot”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.