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.
(Χείλων,—a proper name, also means of the lips,—and λείχων,—licking,—have the like letters; now what does this point to? Chilon licks lips, whether lips like his own, or whether unlike). In explanation of this Epigram Forbiger says (loco citato p. 326.): “Lusus in Chilonem cunnilingum. Hunc ait iure quodam suo lingere, qui vel nomine iisdem literis constante prae se fert lingentem et lingentem quidem tum labra oris, ut labris ligentis similia, tum cunni, ut dissimilia.” (Pun on the name of Chilon, a cunnilingue. The poet says he (Chilon) licks by a sort of inherent right of his own, who even in his name, made up of the same letters, proclaims himself as licking, and licking now the lips of the mouth, which are like the lips of the licker, now those of the female organ, which are unlike). Χεῖλος was in fact used also of the lips of a woman’s organ, the nymphae; the Scholiast on τὰς ἐσχάρας (the nymphae) in the passage from Aristophanes given a little above, interprets this word by τὰ χείλη τῶν γυναικείων αἰδοίων (the lips of the female privates). According to Schneider in his Lexicon χείλων (adj.) signifies thick-lipped. Perhaps it was this very Epigram that led Lambert Bosius to make the statement that χείλων arose by a mere transposition of the letters from λείχον.
Now if λείχην,—for we consider it should be thus accented,—is derived from λείχω (I lick), we cannot but regard it as meaning: something produced by licking, a complaint brought on by licking, and particularly by the licking of the cunnilingue! Surely the Greeks could hardly have expressed themselves more clearly. Then the fact that the name came from the mouth of the common people is the very best reason for its not having been understood by the educated. Yet all the while an entirely similar form of expression has grown up in the mouth of the German common people, the real meaning of which very few have fathomed, but which most certainly arose in the same way as the Greek λείχην. No doubt many of my readers have again and again heard it said of some one with an eruption round the mouth, that is, someone suffering from Herpes labialis (Creeping eruption of the lips): “Well! you have been licking!”—for which educated people substitute the obviously insufficient, “You have been picking!” Very commonly again one may hear: “You have been licking greben, or picking greben; and this word greben is understood as being identical with grieben,—greaves in English, i.e. the remnants of lard that has been cut up into pieces and fried, because the separate pustules of the herpes labialis resemble in appearance the greaves. So people sometimes also say still more explicitly, “You have been licking, or picking, greaves; and one of them has been left sticking to your mouth, to prove your greediness!”
This explanation may seem a very likely one to many; nevertheless we incline to believe the word to be of later origin, and to have arisen from ignorance of the actual facts. We consider it more probable that greben owes its origin to some corruption of language growing out of gremium, the bosom. We have been led to this conjecture by a statement of Adelung’s in his Dictionary, Article “Grieben”, where he says: “In middle-Latin grieben, (greaves), were called, in accordance with a common interchange change of the letters b. and m. gremium”,—though indeed we cannot regard the word as solely and entirely mediæval Latin, for it is found occurring as early as Pliny (Hist. Nat. XII. 19.) and Columella (Res Rust. XII. 19. 3.), and is evidently connected with cremare (to burn). So just as in this case cremium and gremium may have been used interchangeably, has grebe grown out of greme in German, and the latter come to be used as a synonym of griebe,—the latter words according to this having as little in common with one another as the former. However those better practised in the science of word formation must here decide!