kowtow

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To kneel and bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground.

   • When the weather turned cold, the tears that he shed would become frozen like veins; the blood on his forehead from kowtowing would also freeze and would not drip.
2. 2

   To grovel, act in a very submissive manner

   To grovel, act in a very submissive manner; to show obeisance to (someone or something) in such a manner; to bow.

   • I suppose you're going to be nice to Odie and kowtow to Jon and lick the mailman's boots! I don't like you already.
   • The letter to Razin contained another thought that preoccupied Stalin in the first months after the war: the need to avoid “kowtowing to the West,” including showing “unwarranted respect” for the “military authorities of Germany.”
3. 3

   To bow very deeply.

4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      The act of kowtowing.

      • Three elders dressed in their long silk ceremonial gowns perform the kowtow before the altar in their clan ancestral hall.

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