Apparently "window lickers" doesn't mean what I thought it meant ...

[verygreenlawn]

... according to Derek Draper it isn't an incredibly offensive term used to describe people with disabilities, it refers to "someone looking in a window like a kid in a candyshop wishing they were inside".

Sorry doesn't fool me - I was at school in the 80s and I know exactly what that expression meant then and what it means now.

Benny - not at all , I was just saying ours is another area where it's not a nice term and that I have a twunt of a FIL who uses words like that (including racist ones). DH has torn him off a strip for saying them in front of DS

I have to join the list of people who have never heard this used offensively, if pushed I would have said it was from teh french as well.

I wonder if it i a geographical thing? I have lived in Lincolnshire, the midlands, liverpool and south wales and never heard it.

I only saw it discussed as a derogatory term for SN a couple fo months ago on MN.

Given that DS1 did go through a phase of licking windows to 'clean' them, I honestly thought it might be a phrase for a daft toddler.

I thought it was just an Aphex Twin song.
I assumed it was something lechy!

As I have never heard the term before either I find it perfectly credible that Derek Draper might not have. I think it is interesting how vehement some people on this thread are that he must have considering how many of us on this thread are completely unfamiliar with the term.