tug one's forelock
verbEtymology
From a traditional gesture of respect to the higher classes, pulling down one’s front piece of hair or cap in a mock bow.
Definitions
To show deference or obsequious respect.
- These students were quite capable of tugging their forelocks while raising two fingers behind their backs (Newby, 1977), i.e. producing deferential behaviour as part of a more complicated game of manipulation.
- "Aw, lay off, will you? It's part of my job, you know that." "Yeah, bowing and scraping and tugging your forelock to all those rich old crones. Somebody's chauffeur probably got a scratch on the El Dorado, huh?"
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for tug one's forelock. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA