shrill (ligurire, lingere,—to lick greedily, to lick), in all of which the underlying sense is of licking, and the noise connected with it. It is plain that later on the derivatives of these stems suffered manifold variations and corruptions; but how much of all this is to be attributed to speakers and writers among the Greeks themselves, and how much to subsequent transcribers and editors of their work, it might be difficult to decide. But every day we have occasion to note a number of words, to which accident or other circumstances have given an ambiguous character. These, used quite unsuspectingly by the ignorant, make the better informed person blush, or else extort a smile from him that often enough causes the speaker no little embarrassment to know the reason. Undoubtedly it was the same with the Greeks and Romans, and so confusions between λίχω and λείχω, λιχὴν and λειχὴν, might have easily arisen, from which people were subsequently unable to extricate themselves. Originally perhaps λείχω, equally with _lingo_ and _ligurio_ (to lick), may have had the simple sense of licking, and only through later accretions to the meaning, have acquired an ambiguous character; soon however this got transferred to it to the exclusion of all others, and we find it used preferentially as the regular word for _cunnilingere_. The correctness of our conclusion would seem to follow above all from the passage of _Aristophanes_[95] given below, where it is the additional words that narrow down the meaning of λείχω (I lick), and definitely bring out the special signification. The words are said of Ariphrades, who reminds us of the ἀποφρὰς (unmentionable), the name Lucian appropriates to Timarchus: Οὐδὲ παμπόνηρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσεξεύρηκέ τι· τὴν γὰρ αὑτοῦ _γλῶτταν αἰσχραῖς ἡδοναῖς μαίνεται, ἐν κασαυρίοισι λείχων τὴν ἀπόπτυστον δρόσον_, καὶ μολύνων τὴν ὑπήνην, καὶ κυκῶν τὰς ἐσχάρας. (Nor yet utterly villainous is he, but he has discovered yet another device; for he polluted his own tongue with foul delights, _in the stews licking up the abominable dew_, defiling the hair on the upper lip, and tumbling the girls’ _nymphae_). In the following Epigram[96] of an unknown author λείχω is found used absolutely, without any supplementary words: _Χείλων_ καὶ _λείχων_ ἴσα γράμματα· ἐς τί δὲ τοῦτο; _Λείχει_ καὶ _Χείλων_, κἂν ἴσα, κἂν ἄνισα.