Lickety split

Where did this come from, please? Thank you - Sax

I find it a little unsatisfactory to have to say it's a colloquialism of which the origin is not precisely known. At any rate, the work "lick" has long been associated with speed--"He came down the hill full lick," or "He galloped at a great lick." And the word lickety conveys the same notion (that is, "very fast"), always in conjunction with some other word, nowadays "split."