Anybody know where this comes from? In my family, it's used thusly: if the bathroom needs cleaning, someone will give it a lick and a promise - meaning a quick cleaning now, maybe (but probably not) a more thorough one later.

This may come from doing "a lick of work" now, with a promise of more later, but I don't know. Any more definite notions?

While we're at it - what about "a wing and a prayer?" I always have visions of a plane that's lost a wing, trying to land using the equipment described, but don't know if I heard that from a reliable source or if the little man who lives in the northeastern corner of my cranium made it up and planted it somewhere.

p.s. - this is the first post I've ever put together that our beloved spell-wrecker didn't have any problems with - must be doing something wrong

p.p.s. - of course, I spell-checked the above postscript and it couldn't figure out p.s. or spell-wrecker