lick into shape

"Weird birds," soliloquized Mostyn; "but perhaps they'll lick into shape."

To turn to other matters, I have a couple of half finished O'Ds. which, if you like to print, I shall have time to lick into shape.

“Rather an awkward cub to lick into shape, my nephew, eh?”

These boys had been taken from the stews, and haunts of vice about Liverpool, and were as great a set of scamps as any disciplinarian could desire to “lick into shape,” but it is astonishing what a reformation soap and water and the master-at-arms effected in them, in a short time.

Of the new-comers he has got to lick into shape, Howard is the most promising candidate.