mürekkep yalamak

From mürekkep (“ink”) +‎ yalamak (“to lick”), literally “to lick ink”, opinions as to its origins vary:

• From the act of licking the tip of a quill to moisten the ink before writing with it,
• From the habit of scribes licking their fingers before rubbing the paper to remove writing errors,^[1]
• From a tradition of school-starting children licking a paper with a prayer written on it in ink and coated with sugar.^[2]

• IPA^(key): /my.ɾecˈcep.ja.ɫa.mak/
• Hyphenation: mü‧rek‧kep‧ya‧la‧mak

mürekkep yalamak (third-person singular simple present mürekkep yalar)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To become an informed and cultured person through educatin.
   • 2022 May, Yusuf Esad Özgüner, “Tekne”, in Dr. Ömer GÖK, editor, TÜRK DİLİ, May edition, volume CXXI, number 845, Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, pages 82–84:

     Sadece sen mi kitap okuyup sözlük karıştırıyorsun! Hıh, tekne kazıntısı seni! Biz de mürekkep yaladık zamanında. Şekerlisinden...

     Are you the only one who reads books and flips through dictionaries! Huh, you boat shaving, you! We, too, licked ink back in the day. With sugar...

• “mürekkep yalamak”, in Turkish dictionaries, Türk Dil Kurumu
• Çağbayır, Yaşar (2007) “mürekkep yalamak”, in Ötüken Türkçe Sözlük (in Turkish), Istanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, page 3385