salt-lickn.
A place where cattle collect to lick the earth impregnated with salt. Also figurative. Now chiefly North American.
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the world > food and drink > food > animal food > [noun] > salt lick > place
lick1747
salt-lick1751
salting-place1842
the world > animals > mammals > group Ungulata (hoofed) > group Ruminantia (sheep, goats, cows, etc.) > bos taurus or ox > [noun] > salt-lick
salt-lick1751
1751 C. Gist Jrnls. (1893) 42 Salt Licks, or Ponds, formed by little Streams or Dreins of Water.
1764 Museum Rusticum 2 lxiv. 209 We give this name of salt licks to the salt springs, which, in various places, issue naturally out of the ground, and form each a little rill.
1769 W. Hunter in Philos. Trans. 1768 (Royal Soc.) 58 39 The marsh, called the Salt-Lick, near the River Ohio.
1847 W. C. L. Martin Ox 10/2 They visit the salt-licks, and are there to be found at all seasons of the year; some leaving the saline morass, others travelling towards it.
1859 J. Palliser Jrnl. 16 Feb. (1863) 129 A splendid ram..had been caught by setting a snare in a path leading to a ‘salt-lick’.
1922 Beaver May 7/2 They [sc. bighorn sheep] being in the habit of seeking the salt-licks early in the morning and again late in the evening.
1948 C. Day Lewis Poems 1943–7 75 The sea rolled up like a blind, oh pitiless light Revealing, shrivelling all! Lacklustre weeds My hours, my truth a salt-lick.
1965 R. McKie Company of Animals vii. 113 Jim went at first light to check which animals were visiting a small salt-lick in the jungle.
1976 N. Thornburg Cutter & Bone viii. 202 Immediately she was weeping in his arms, her face a lovely saltlick to his mouth.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1909; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
> as lemmas
salt-lick
a. A spot to which animals resort to lick the salt or salt earth found there. Also buffalo-lick, salt-lick.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > food > animal food > [noun] > salt lick > place
lick1747
salt-lick1751
salting-place1842
the world > the earth > land > landscape > marsh, bog, or swamp > [noun] > salt-marsh > where animals lick
lick1747
licking-place1751
licking-pond1751
deer-lick1778
1747 Virginia Land Patents & Grants in Amer. Speech (1940) 15 280/2 Crossing the said Run above a Lick.
1750 T. Walker Jrnl. Explor. (1888) 51 At the mouth of a Creek..is a Lick, and I believe there was a hundred Buffaloes at it.
1751 C. Gist Jrnls. (1893) 42 Salt Licks, or Ponds, formed by little Streams or Dreins of Water.
1784 J. F. D. Smyth Tour U.S.A. I. xviii. 141 Licks are particular places..where the clay or earth is impregnated with saline particles.
1796 J. Morse Amer. Universal Geogr. (new ed.) I. 663 Salt Lick and Salt Spring are used synonymously, but improperly, as the former differs from the latter in that it is dry.
1807 P. Gass Jrnls. 219 One of our sergeants shot a deer at a lick close to our camp.
a1816 B. Hawkins Sketch Creek Country 1798 & 1799 in Coll. Georgia Hist. Soc. (1848) III. 29 Parallel with this, are some licks in post and red oak saplin flats.
1825 J. Pickering Jrnl. 21 Dec. in Emigration (1830) v. 49 Deer will go miles to the salt spring, or ‘licks’ as they are called.
1827 J. F. Cooper Prairie I. v. 78 To rout the unlawful settlers who had gathered nigh the Buffaloe lick in old Kentucky.
1832 J. McGregor Brit. Amer. II. 556 Both buffalo and deer resort to them for the purpose of licking the salt off the shrubs hence the name lick.
1841 J. F. Cooper Deerslayer I. iv. 67 Like deer standing at a lick.
1877 N. S. Shaler App. to J. A. Allen's Amer. Bison 458 The springs at Big-Bone Lick, as at all the other licks of Kentucky are sources of saline waters derived from the older Palaeozoic rocks.
1957 Beaver Summer 37/2 The goat evidently was headed for the same lick from which the sheep were returning.
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