sponging

CIDE DICTIONARY

sponging, a. & n. 

 a. & n. from Sponge, v.  [1913 Webster]

Sponging house (Eng. Law), a bailiff's or other house in which debtors are put before being taken to jail, or until they compromise with their creditors. At these houses extortionate charges are commonly made for food, lodging, etc.

THESAURUS

sponging

abject, ablution, absorbency, absorbent, absorption, adsorbent, adsorption, apple-polishing, ass-kissing, assimilation, backscratching, beggarly, blotter, blotting, blotting paper, bone-lazy, bootlicking, brown-nosing, cadging, chemisorption, chemosorption, cleaning out, cowering, crawling, cringing, crouching, digestion, dilatory, do-nothing, doless, douche, douching, dronish, drony, easy, elution, elutriation, endosmosis, enema, engrossment, ergophobic, exosmosis, faineant, fawnery, fawning, flattering, flunkyism, flush, flushing, flushing out, footlicking, good-for-nothing, groveling, handshaking, hangdog, indolent, infiltration, ingratiating, ingratiation, insinuation, irrigation, laggard, lathering, lavabo, lavage, lavation, laving, lax, lazy, mealymouthed, mealymouthedness, mopping, mopping up, nonaggressive, obeisance, obeisant, obsequious, obsequiousness, on bended knee, osmosis, parasitic, parasitism, percolation, procrastinative, prostrate, prostration, remiss, rinse, rinsing, scouring, scrounging, scrub, scrubbing, scrubbing up, seepage, shampoo, shiftless, slack, slothful, slow, sniveling, soaping, sorption, sponge, swabbing, sycophancy, sycophantic, timeserving, toadeating, toadying, toadyish, toadyism, truckling, tufthunting, unenterprising, wash, washing, washing up, washout, washup, wiping up, work-shy