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lick into shape
Idioms and Phrases
Also, whip into shape . Bring into satisfactory condition or appearance, as in The garden looks neglected, but Dad will soon lick it into shape , or We need at least three more practices before the team is whipped into shape . The expression using lick , which some think alludes to how bears treat their cubs, dates from about 1600. The variant alludes to the forceful use of a whip to accomplish something.Example Sentences
"Weird birds," soliloquized Mostyn; "but perhaps they'll lick into shape."
To turn to other matters, I have a couple of half finished O'Ds. which, if you like to print, I shall have time to lick into shape.
“Rather an awkward cub to lick into shape, my nephew, eh?â€
These boys had been taken from the stews, and haunts of vice about Liverpool, and were as great a set of scamps as any disciplinarian could desire to “lick into shape,†but it is astonishing what a reformation soap and water and the master-at-arms effected in them, in a short time.
Of the new-comers he has got to lick into shape, Howard is the most promising candidate.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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