lickpenny
English edit
Etymology edit
Noun edit
lickpenny (plural lickpennies)
- (obsolete) Something that devours or absorbs lots of money; something expensive.
- 15th century, anonymous author, London Lickpenny[1]:
- For well London Lykke-peny for ones and eye, / For lake of money I may not spede.
- 1823, Sir Walter Scott, Saint Ronan's Well:
- […] at Smyrna, you talked of a lawsuit—law is a lickpenny, Mr Tyrrel—no counsellor like the pound in purse.
- A miserly person.
- 2014, Gavin Wood, The Fate of the Jacobite Grenadiers:
- The Scotsmen, being lickpennies by nature, rode off without paying their bill!
Related terms edit
- black hole (“An entity which consumes time or resources”) (figurative)
- money pit (idiomatic)
Adjective edit
lickpenny (comparative more lickpenny, superlative most lickpenny)
- (obsolete) Expensive.
- 1894, James Hamilton Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth[2], volume 2, pages 22–23:
- His pouch was now all void and empty, his future years were like to be sour, thoughty, and woe-begone, and himself a cumberworld, unsicker of his scarce and slender livelihood in lickpenny London, forced to beg, steal, or starve, and gaping after honest death.