take a licking in English

Audio: En-au-take a licking.ogg

Forms: takes a licking [present, singular, third-person], taking a licking [participle, present], took a licking [past], taken a licking [participle, past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|take<,,took,taken> a licking}} take a licking (third-person singular simple present takes a licking, present participle taking a licking, simple past took a licking, past participle taken a licking)

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes a licking",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking a licking",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took a licking",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken a licking",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> a licking"
      },
      "expansion": "take a licking (third-person singular simple present takes a licking, present participle taking a licking, simple past took a licking, past participle taken a licking)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "take a licking and keep on ticking"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To suffer a defeat or a beating."
      ],
      "id": "en-take_a_licking-en-verb-INfCH35u",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) To suffer a defeat or a beating."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-take a licking.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c7/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take a licking"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "take a licking and keep on ticking"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes a licking",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking a licking",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took a licking",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken a licking",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> a licking"
      },
      "expansion": "take a licking (third-person singular simple present takes a licking, present participle taking a licking, simple past took a licking, past participle taken a licking)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English slang",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To suffer a defeat or a beating."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) To suffer a defeat or a beating."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-take a licking.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c7/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/En-au-take_a_licking.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take a licking"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-10-04 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-09-20 using wiktextract (ea0d853 and 1ab82da). 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.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"take a licking" meaning in English

Verb