licking vs ending

licking and ending both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
licking	Yes	No	No	No
ending	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, ending is a hypernym of licking; that is, ending is a word with a broader meaning than licking:

Other hypernyms of licking include conclusion, finish, failure.

licking (noun)	ending (noun)
the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows	the act of ending something
an unsuccessful ending to a struggle or contest	the end of a word (a suffix or inflectional ending or final morpheme)
	the last section of a communication
	event whose occurrence ends something
	the point in time at which something ends