Dictionary

lick and a promise en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) A quick, not-very-thorough wash.
   • She'd given her face a lick and a promise, drawn her hair back tight and walked in. 2007, Joy Dettman, One Sunday:
   • My grandparents called me only an hour before they decided to come visit, so I had to give the dirty living room a lick and a promise.
   • He never felt quite clean with “cat baths”—as Marcel called them, or “a lick and a promise,” the way Renaud put it. 2010, Nina Ansley, The Plague of Provence, page 47:
   • 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.” 2014, Margaret Weis, Robert Krammes, The Seventh Sigil:
2. (broadly, idiomatic) The hasty or incomplete performance of a task, done with the intention ("a promise") of thorough completion later.
   • 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. 2014, Timothy Schaffert, The Swan Gondola, page 74:
   • 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. 2013, David Jeremiah, God in You: Releasing the Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Life:
   • Rising out of poverty will require not a lick and a promise but deep reform. 2014 May 22, “EDITORIAL: India's Modi wins voter mandate for economic growth”, in Washington Times:
   • The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue. 2000, Mary Higgins Clark, While My Pretty One Sleeps:
   • 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! 1955, Max Shulman, Robert Paul Smith, The Tender Trap: A Comedy, page 14:

Forms

Translations (11)

es aseo de gato (a quick, not-very-thorough wash) · de Katzenwäsche (a quick, not-very-thorough wash) · pt banho de puta (a quick, not-very-thorough wash) · ru тяп-ляп (hasty completion of a task) · de halbherziger Versuch (hasty completion of a task) · pt banho de gato (a quick, not-very-thorough wash) · pt feito nas coxas (hasty completion of a task) · de schöne Schein (hasty completion of a task) · es baño de gato (a quick, not-very-thorough wash) · fi hutaisu (hasty completion of a task) · ru халту́ра (hasty completion of a task)