Game of Thrones always had plenty of medieval slang, and now that we’ve seen the premiere of the successor show House of the Dragon, it seems safe to say that it will continue this proud tradition.
One word that cropped in the series premiere that you may be wondering about is “lickspittle.” This was said right after Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) partied with his city watch officers and proclaimed his dead nephew Baelon the “heir for a day.” After hearing about this, King Viserys (Paddy Considine) has Daemon brought to the throne room, where he bellows that Daemon could have been comforting his family in their darkest hour, but instead chose to “celebrate his own rise with his whores and his lickspittles.”
But what is a lickspittle, anyway?
What is a lickspittle?
Per Merriam Webster, a lickspittle is “a fawning subordinate” or “toady.” In a nutshell, it’s a slang way of calling someone a sycophant, a suck-up, a brown noser. Lickspittles are people who swell the ego of someone else, typically who occupies a higher station in society than themself, in hopes of furthering their own fortunes.
Per WordOrigins.org, the term dates back to 1586, when it was used in a commentary by John James Gryneus on the biblical book of Haggai:
"Although the former sort of these men haue their fauourers and followers, no lesse then th’other (for there were not wanting in times past, flatterers which did licke the spittle of Dyonisius the tyraunte, and said that it was sweeter then the sweete wine)."
So yeah, the origin of the word literally comes from someone being willing to lick the spittle off another person’s lips and tell them it is “sweeter than the sweete wine.” May you use this very useful information wisely.
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