Talk:lick clean

for me, i think this is not a good page. it means lick clean!— This unsigned comment was added by 83.54.100.35 (talk) at 21:19, 23 March 2011.

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lick clean

SOP. See also [[talk:lick clean]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. At least dry, smooth, and stiff work just as "clean". DCDuring TALK 22:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Also flat, even. DCDuring TALK 00:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Keep. To me, this kind of verbs are phrasal verbs similar to prepositional go out, take out, etc. and can be translated as single words into some languages, e.g.Russian: облизывать (oblízyvat') or вылизывать (vylízyvat'), German: ablecken or sauberlecken. The word is also included in some online dictionaries. --Anatoli 23:12, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

But none of the OneLook references and not Longmans or Century. Translation target is not much of a rationale, especially not from German (or Hungarian or Finnish). DCDuring TALK 00:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• Keep. Just because you lick something clean doesn't mean it actually becomes clean. It has meaning beyond the sum of its parts. ---> Tooironic 00:00, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

"Clean" is not an absolute state of affairs. (What is?) Even chlorine bleach will leaver certain kinds of dirt behind. Your rationale ignores polysemy and the fuzziness of the meaning of almost all words in natural speech. It is a rationale for an absurd degree of inclusiveness, which would further dilute our efforts. DCDuring TALK 00:11, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I could laugh, drink, smoke (etc.) myself silly, doesn't mean I'm actually silly. It's just non-literal use of English. Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I would keep it, but improve the definition. I think that it means to eat all the food on a plate, leaving hardly any trace behind (like I normally do). SemperBlotto 10:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Does it need "plate" to mean that? Is it an intransitive sense?

There are many other uses of "lick clean", whatever might be the most common. Cats lick themselves clean. In the wilderness without first aid, I might lick a cut clean.

Perhaps lick the plate clean is an idiom, though no OneLook reference has it. DCDuring TALK 14:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

SB makes a good point. The current definition is SOP and does not make the phrase inclusible, but lick clean means what SB says it does, not only with plate: google books:"licked the platter clean" and even a couple at "licked the table clean". So I say split the current definition into one reflecting non-licking actions and one {{&lit}}.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:42, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

[[clean#Adjective]] lacked the sense "empty", which some of the unabridged dictionaries at OneLook have. A few OneLook dictionaries have "clean plate" among their usage examples for some sense of "clean". The senses are variously worded. They also have various partitionings of the senses of clean#Verb, almost always including one that fits this. As always our senses of clean are deficient relative to unabridged dictionaries. I suppose we could justify keeping borderline SoP entries so we have a list of common collocations when as and if we get around to improving our basic service-list entries. DCDuring TALK 17:09, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

And lick ones plate sees some use without clean (though not much). So perhaps this is SOP after all.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Weak keep. If you were told to clean a plate, you wouldn't do so by licking it. This has a specific meaning of clean which is not a common meaning. The question is if it's one that's evident based just on these two words. DAVilla 15:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Kept with a definition I've modified in light of this discussion.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a phrasal verb

Whatever else this may be, it is NOT a phrasal verb as we and all the dictionaries I've looked at (all those on “phrasal verb”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.) define it. DCDuring TALK 11:35, 22 March 2013 (UTC)