10 January 2021
Lickspittle is an epithet that you don’t hear all that often, although given the large number of them in politics today, perhaps one should hear it more often. The OED classifies it in Frequency Band 3, meaning that it appears less than once per ten million words. (Words with similar frequencies are prelapsarian, agglutinative, dirt-cheap, and badass.) I had thought it might be more frequent in British usage than North American, but it is slightly more frequent on the right side of the pond.
Its etymology is simple, a compound of lick, v. + spittle n., and the metaphor underlying the word is similarly straightforward. A lickspittle is a sycophant or toady, one who figuratively laps up the saliva of their master.
The metaphor appears by 1586 in a commentary on the biblical book of Haggai by John James Gryneus:
Although the former sort of these men haue their fauourers and followers, no lesse then th'other (for there were not wanting in times past, flatterers which did licke the spittle of Dyonisius the tyraunte, and said that it was sweeter then the sweete wine).
But the word itself isn’t recorded until the middle of the eighteenth century. It appears as a name of a character, the Reverend Doctor Lick-Spittle, in the 1755 anonymous play The Misrepresentor Represented. (The play may be older. The publication date is 1755, but the subtitle says, “not performed in this Kingdom since the Year 1715.” Whether or not the subtitle is true is anyone’s guess.)
It appears again as a name in John Carteret Pilkington’s 1760 picaresque autobiography, although in this case the name is a factitious nickname. In an incident rendered in the book as if it were a stage play, Pilkington has a woman label an obsequious man “Timothy Lickspittle,” upon which another woman gives the man’s real name:
KITTY. Another freeman, I warrant! he wants to inspect the pantry.—Duke (reads) and it may be in your capacity, if it is your inclination, to save from ruin your most obsequious, most devoted, most obliged, most obedient, most—Oh! Lard! I can remember no more, Timothy Lickspittle.
Lady BAB. Surely you wrongs him, my Lord Duke! let me see, no, faith, 'tis Ricard Gapple, if I can reade.
And by 1766 we see the word being used directly. From another satirical piece that appeared in the London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer of May of that year:
Q. How do officers rise?
A. By merit
Q. How many different kinds of merit are there?
A. Four: the first consists in having a pretty large sum at command; the second, in being son to a nobleman in place; the third in marrying the b——d or wh——e of a G——l O——r, and the last in being a talebearer and lickspittle to the C——l of the r——t one belongs to.
The expurgated words are bastard, whore, General Officer, Colonel, and regiment.
And it is recorded in Francis Grose’s 1796 edition of his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
LICKSPITTLE. A parasite, or talebearer.
Use of lickspittle became more frequent in the nineteenth century, moving out of satire and slang to general discourse. Sadly, it seems to have declined in frequency in the latter half of the twentieth. It is a very useful and often apt word.
Sources:
“A Constitutional and Political English Catechism. Necessary for All Families.” London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, vol. 35, May 1766, 266. HathiTrustDigital Archive.
Davies, Mark. Corpus of News on the Web (NOW), January 2021.
Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, third edition. London: Hooper and Wigstead, 1796.
Gryneus, John James. Haggeus, the Prophet. London: John Wolfe for John Harrison, 1586, C2v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
The Misrepresentor Represented. Dublin, 1755. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. lick-spittle, n.
Pilkington, John Carteret. The Real Story of John Carteret Pilkington. London: 1760, 290. HathiTrustDigital Archive.