lickpenny

English

Etymology

lick +‎ penny

Noun

lickpenny (plural lickpennies)

1. (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.

2. 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

• black hole (“An entity which consumes time or resources”) (figurative)
• money pit (idiomatic)

Adjective

lickpenny (comparative more lickpenny, superlative most lickpenny)

1. (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.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:expensive