See lick and a promise in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for lick and a promise meaning in English (4.8kB)
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{
"ref": "2007, Joy Dettman, One Sunday",
"text": "She'd given her face a lick and a promise, drawn her hair back tight and walked in.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Nina Ansley, The Plague of Provence, page 47",
"text": "He never felt quite clean with “cat baths”—as Marcel called them, or “a lick and a promise,” the way Renaud put it.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Margaret Weis, Robert Krammes, The Seventh Sigil",
"text": "She had not had time for a proper bath in the week since this journey had begun. She had been forced to bathe in the washbasins of the inns along the route, giving herself what her old nursemaid would have called “a lick and a promise.”",
"type": "quotation"
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"A quick, not-very-thorough wash."
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"(idiomatic) A quick, not-very-thorough wash."
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"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "a quick, not-very-thorough wash",
"tags": [
"feminine"
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"word": "Katzenwäsche"
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"ref": "1955, Max Shulman, Robert Paul Smith, The Tender Trap: A Comedy, page 14",
"text": "Now this is not the way to get a house in order. What this place needs is a real thorough old-fashioned cleaning. A lick and a promise won't do, no, sir!",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2000, Mary Higgins Clark, While My Pretty One Sleeps",
"text": "The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2013, David Jeremiah, God in You: Releasing the Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Life",
"text": "Well, he knows hes supposed to make his bed before he goes to school, so he gives it a lick and a promise and walks out of the room.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 May 22, “EDITORIAL: India's Modi wins voter mandate for economic growth”, in Washington Times",
"text": "Rising out of poverty will require not a lick and a promise but deep reform.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Timothy Schaffert, The Swan Gondola, page 74",
"text": "Workers scrambled to slap it all together on nothing but a lick and a promise—unlike the pristine whiteness of the court, the haphazard shacks ahead clashed in color and stripe, some tall, some short, each roof at an awkward angle to the other.",
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"The hasty or incomplete performance of a task."
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"(by extension, idiomatic) The hasty or incomplete performance of a task."
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{
"_dis1": "2 98",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"word": "hutaisu"
},
{
"_dis1": "2 98",
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"tags": [
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"word": "halbherziger Versuch"
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"_dis1": "2 98",
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"word": "schöne Schein"
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"roman": "xaltúra",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"tags": [
"feminine"
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"word": "халту́ра"
},
{
"_dis1": "2 98",
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"roman": "tjap-ljap",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"word": "тяп-ляп"
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"ref": "2007, Joy Dettman, One Sunday",
"text": "She'd given her face a lick and a promise, drawn her hair back tight and walked in.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Nina Ansley, The Plague of Provence, page 47",
"text": "He never felt quite clean with “cat baths”—as Marcel called them, or “a lick and a promise,” the way Renaud put it.",
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},
{
"ref": "2014, Margaret Weis, Robert Krammes, The Seventh Sigil",
"text": "She had not had time for a proper bath in the week since this journey had begun. She had been forced to bathe in the washbasins of the inns along the route, giving herself what her old nursemaid would have called “a lick and a promise.”",
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"(idiomatic) A quick, not-very-thorough wash."
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"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2000, Mary Higgins Clark, While My Pretty One Sleeps",
"text": "The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2013, David Jeremiah, God in You: Releasing the Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Life",
"text": "Well, he knows hes supposed to make his bed before he goes to school, so he gives it a lick and a promise and walks out of the room.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 May 22, “EDITORIAL: India's Modi wins voter mandate for economic growth”, in Washington Times",
"text": "Rising out of poverty will require not a lick and a promise but deep reform.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Timothy Schaffert, The Swan Gondola, page 74",
"text": "Workers scrambled to slap it all together on nothing but a lick and a promise—unlike the pristine whiteness of the court, the haphazard shacks ahead clashed in color and stripe, some tall, some short, each roof at an awkward angle to the other.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"The hasty or incomplete performance of a task."
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"(by extension, idiomatic) The hasty or incomplete performance of a task."
],
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"translations": [
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"code": "de",
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"sense": "a quick, not-very-thorough wash",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Katzenwäsche"
},
{
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"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"word": "hutaisu"
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"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"tags": [
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"word": "halbherziger Versuch"
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"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "schöne Schein"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "xaltúra",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "халту́ра"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "tjap-ljap",
"sense": "hasty completion of a task",
"word": "тяп-ляп"
}
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"word": "lick and a promise"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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