Sheep's eye and licorice tooth

Posted by Scott on December 31, 2000

In Reply to: Sheep's eye and licorice tooth posted by Bob on December 31, 2000

In the original Frank Loesser score, the expression is "sheep's eye and the LICKERISH tooth." Loesser eplained how he arrived at it in a letter that's printed in his daughter's fine biography of him, A MOST REMARKABLE FELLA (page 109). The short of it is that he wanted a companion word that meant "covetous", fearing "sheep's eye" did not completely convey the exact thoughts of the guy who would be gazing at her. He went to Roget's and found that "lecherous" was a sort of synonym for covetous, but didn't quite like the way it sounded, so he consulted the Oxford English Dictionary and found that two archaic spellings of "lecherous" were "licorice" and "lickerish." He chose the latter. Voila!

• Sheep's eye and licorice tooth Sauerkraut 01/02/01
  • Sheep's eye and licorice tooth Sauerkraut 01/02/01