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Licking vs Shellacking - What's the difference?

licking | shellacking |

As nouns the difference between licking and shellacking

is that licking is an act of licking while shellacking is (informal|us) a heavy defeat, drubbing, or beating; used particularly in sports and political contexts.

As verbs the difference between licking and shellacking

is that licking is while shellacking is .

licking

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • An act of licking.
  • (slang) A severe beating.
  • (slang) A great loss or defeat.
    • Our football team took a licking last night.

    Verb

    (head)

    • shellacking

    English

    Verb

    (head)

    • Noun

    (en noun)
  • (informal, US) A heavy defeat, drubbing, or beating; used particularly in sports and political contexts.
  • * 1929 , vol. 75 (July, 1929), p. 49:
    • The News baseball team defeated the Press-Guardian outfit, 8 to 4, in a recent game, which squares accounts for the shellacking the News received a year ago.
  • * 1929 , "National Affairs: Vote Castings", November 18, 1929:
    • Mourned Candidate La Guardia: "What a shellacking they gave me!"
  • * 1929 , vol. 12 (December, 1929), p. 21:
    • Our baseball team got off to an indifferent start at the beginning of the season, but [...] "Steve" Newman gave Gonzalo another shellacking that he won't forget for some time.
  • * 1944 , "Defeats of the Home Front" (news article, February 23, 1944; reprinted in Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Press , University Press of Mississippi, 2009, p. 126):
    • Unity and democracy are still taking a shellacking here on the home front, despite our successes in the Marshall Islands and in Italy.
  • * 2009 , Strengthening Congress , p. 69:
    • After many months of watching its public image take a shellacking as a result of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Congress finally started to move on lobby reform.
  • * 2010 , October 17, 2010:
    • [C]learly Obama hopes that just as Clinton recovered from his party's midterm shellacking in 1994 to win re-election two years later, so can he.
  • * 2010 Ben Shpigel, "Charmed Giants Take a Big First Step," , October 28, 2010:
    • Bochy was speaking for the masses, who watched a supposed duel of Cy Young award winners evolve into a full-fledged shellacking .
  • * 2010 November 4, , comments at a press conference, after his political party lost control of the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections:
    • Now, I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like I took last night.