Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) to toady, to curry favour; thus bootlicking, n. and adj.

1845		J.J. Hooper Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs (1851) 58: A young man who was inclined to boot-lick any body suspected of having money.
1850		in N.E. Eliason Tarheel Talk 261: I was bootlicking [in volunteering to do something for a professor].
1870		Manchester Eve. News 12 July 4/2: The New York Spirit of the Times observes —‘A more low-lived cringing cur [...] Fed on the best and deluged with champagne, he would have licked the black off Ashbury’s boots’ [...] It would be wrong to gather from this foul-mouthed nonsense that the writer has any objection to boot-licking in abstract.
1877		Newcastle Courant 4 May 6/3: His non-promotion has been due to independence of spirit [...] his ‘not having boot-licked the swabs above him’.
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 24: boot-lick, v. t. To curry favor with an instructor.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 60: You’d be like the others then — complaining and yelping [...] when my back’s turned; bootlicking when I condescend to notice them.
1918		N.Y. Tribune 20 Jan. 38/6: Bootlick — to flatter.
1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 58: He boot-licked around until he became a ward committeeman.
1939		Sun. Mirror 1 Jan. 5/4: No more ‘bootlicking’ is the nation’s verdict.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 38: There’s too much bootlickin’ around here, as it is.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 57: The short form, boot-lick, may be used either as a noun, referring to the person, or as a verb.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 343: [M]y unyieldy aversion to botlickering.