licking

Distinctions

Lechichah (לחיכה)

Root ל-ח-ך. Twice in the Torah, both in Balak's speech to the Midianite elders: the congregation will lick away everything around us as an ox licks away the grass of the field (Bamidbar 22:4). Four further times in Tanach (Melachim I 18:38; Michah 7:17; Yeshayahu 49:23; Tehillim 72:9).

• Rabbi Yaakov Berger of Kiryat Sefer (Milon Leshon Mikra) conjectures that the word derives from cheich, the palate, taking the initial lamed as no part of the core.
• Rabbi Yaakov Yehudah Zilberberg (Leshonenu HaKedoshah p. 304) connects it to cheich in a similar way, licking being the use of the tongue to roll liquid (lach) toward the palate.
• Ibn Parchon (Machberet He'Aruch): lechichah is eating quickly.

Chazal extend it to fire, which "licked" (lichacha) a plowed field, in the sugya of one liable for a fire that scorches a field so that the owner must plow it again (Bava Kamma 6a; Yerushalmi Bava Kamma 6:5). Rabbi Klein suggests that perhaps the flames coming out of the greater fire can be likened to a tongue coming out of a mouth to lick something, and then says plainly that beyond that he is at a loss to explain the connection, pointing to Melachim I 18:38 and the Targum to Malachi 3:19, where verbs for licking are again used of a fire singeing something. In Esther Rabbah 8:7 Mordechai says he would have licked (lechichah) the shoe on Haman's foot for the sake of Klal Yisrael had the honor of Heaven not been at stake.

Lekikah (לקיקה)

Root ל-ק-ק (Ibn Chayyuj, Ibn Janach, Radak, Ibn Parchon) or the biliteral ל-ק (Menachem Ibn Saruk, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim). Seven times in Tanach in two settings: Gideon's water test, where Hashem would not have him lead so large an army lest the miracle be less apparent, and the men who lapped (yalok) the water like a dog were kept and called hamelakekim, "the lickers," while those who knelt down to drink were taken as too steeped in avodah zarah and discharged (Shoftim 7:5-7); and Eliyahu's warning that at the spot where the dogs licked (lakeku) Navos's blood they will lick (yaloku) Achav's (Melachim I 21:19, fulfilled 22:38).

• Rabbi Pappenheim gives the biliteral core as "detaching something small from something larger," since a lick takes only a little at a time; on that core he groups yelek, the grasshopper that typically feeds by lekikah (Nachum 3:16; Yoel 1:4, 2:25), for which Ibn Ezra (to Yoel 1:4) cites a similar explanation in the name of the Karaite exegete Yefet ben Ali; melikah, the Kohen detaching a bird's head from its body with his finger, the head being smaller than the rest (Vayikra 1:15, 5:8); and lahakat (Shmuel I 19:20) as a subgroup drawn out of a larger grouping. (Others read lahak as a metathesis of kahal.)
• Ibn Parchon: lekikah is drinking without a vessel.
• Chazal read the root into two names: Amalek as am plus lak, the nation that came like a dog to lick Yisrael's blood as they left Mitzrayim (Tanchuma, Ki Seitzei 9; Pesikta D'Rav Kahana, Zachor 8), and Balak as ba plus l'lok, he who came to lick their blood (Midrash Aggadah to Balak, and so too Baal HaTurim and Sefer Russiana).

Are they one word or two?

• Ibn Saruk and Radak define ל-ק-ק with cognates of ל-ח-ך, which treats the pair as synonyms; kuf, kaf, and ches are often considered interchangeable.
• Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed) lists them outright as synonyms, and Rabbi Asher Weiser (Mikra V'Lashon) reads lechichah as a cognate of lekikah, probably, Rabbi Klein adds, assuming the ches turns into the first kuf and the kaf into the second.
• Against that, and along lines similar to Gesenius, Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (Otzar Nirdafim 175) grants they mean the same act but separates them by sound: ל-ק imitates the slurp of taking up liquid, hence Gideon's soldiers at the water, while ל-ח-ך makes a harder sound implying the licking of something less liquid, hence the ox in the field, and he too anchors that root in cheich. Rabbi Klein reads Ibn Parchon's quick-eating versus vessel-less drinking as perhaps alluding to the same distinction.

The onomatopoeia excursus

• Gesenius held that Semitic and Indo-European (his "Indo-Germanic") share many stem-words and grammatical roots, and put this down either to direct borrowing or to the two families independently coining similar words in imitation of the same natural sound. For the latter he adduces (Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, Introduction §1:4) lakak and lachach in Hebrew, leicho in Greek, lingo in Latin, lecher in French, lecken in German and lick in English: all mean licking, and on his view they are not etymologically cognate but each an imitation of the sound of a lick.
• Rabbi Klein lengthens the list with lek (Afrikaans), likken (Dutch), slikke (Danish and Norwegian), sleikja (Icelandic), ligh (Irish), leccata (Italian), linge (Romanian), yaleaq (Arabic), and leki (Esperanto), and then dissents in his own voice: the onomatopoeia account is not enough, he says, since different cultures hear and record the same natural sound differently, and the resemblance across so many languages rather suggests to him that Indo-European languages might have borrowed from or evolved out of Semitic ones, as some linguists posit, instead of developing alongside them independently.
• Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 38:17): Greek leicho and Latin lingere derive from the Hebrew word for licking.

The root ל-ק-ה, hitting or smiting, is the root of malkus, lashes. It may not be connected to lekikah at all, but, Rabbi Klein suggests, one could argue that the whip is like a tongue lashing the sinner's body as a tongue licks. In a parallel, English "lick" means both to smite or defeat an enemy (an idiom based on Bamidbar 22:4) and to pass the tongue over something, and linguists would probably call that resemblance to ל-ק-ה and ל-ק-ק pure chance.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Balak: Lick It Up," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 July 2024.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Lick It Up," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Bamidbar 22:4; Michah 7:17; Yeshayahu 49:23; Tehillim 72:9; Shoftim 7:5-7; Melachim I 18:38, 21:19, 22:38; Vayikra 1:15 and 5:8; Shmuel I 19:20; Nachum 3:16; Yoel 1:4 and 2:25; Bava Kamma 6a and Yerushalmi Bava Kamma 6:5; Esther Rabbah 8:7; Tanchuma, Ki Seitzei 9; Pesikta D'Rav Kahana, Zachor 8; Machberes Menachem; Ibn Parchon, Machberes HeAruch; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, Ohel Moed; Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi, Otzar Nirdafim 175; Targum to Malachi 3:19; Midrash Aggadah to Balak; Baal HaTurim; Sefer Russiana; Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, Introduction §1:4; Ibn Ezra to Yoel 1:4 citing Yefet ben Ali; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 38:17.