the.com/lick

means To pass your tongue over something — in one quick swipe or a slow drag — usually to taste it, clean it, or seal it shut.

from Lick traces back through Old English 'liccian' to a very old Germanic root, and further back to a Proto-Indo-European root (reconstructed as something like 'leigh-') that shows up across a striking number of unrelated-seeming languages — Latin's 'lingere' (source of 'lingual' and 'cunnilingus'), Greek's 'leikhein', even Sanskrit forms with the same sense. Linguists sometimes call it one of the great 'sound-symbolic' words: the l-k motion of the mouth almost performs the act it names.