kowtow
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From either Cantonese 叩頭/叩头 (kau3 tau4) or Mandarin 叩頭/叩头 (kòutóu). Literally, “knock head”.
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]kowtow (third-person singular simple present kowtows, present participle kowtowing, simple past and past participle kowtowed) (intransitive)
- (historical) To kneel and bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground.
- 2013, Wendy Swartz, Robert Ford Campany, Yang Lu, Jessey J. C. Choo, Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 645:
- 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.
- (figuratively) To grovel, act in a very submissive manner.
- 1984 December 30, Jim Davis, Garfield[1] (comic):
- 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.
- 2015, Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 265:
- 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.”
- To bow very deeply.
- (Can we add an example for this sense?)
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]kneel such that forehead touches ground
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bow deeply
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act submissively
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Noun
[edit]kowtow (plural kowtows)
- The act of kowtowing.
- 1990, Hugh D. R. Baker, Hong Kong Images: People and Animals, Hong Kong University Press, →ISBN, page 93:
- Three elders dressed in their long silk ceremonial gowns perform the kowtow before the altar in their clan ancestral hall.
Translations
[edit]kowtowing
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See also
[edit]Portuguese
[edit]Noun
[edit]kowtow m (plural kowtows)
- kowtow (bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground)
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Cantonese
- English terms derived from Cantonese
- English terms borrowed from Mandarin
- English terms derived from Mandarin
- English 2-syllable words
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- Rhymes:English/aʊ
- Rhymes:English/aʊ/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with historical senses
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- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Body language
- Portuguese lemmas
- Portuguese nouns
- Portuguese countable nouns
- Portuguese terms spelled with W
- Portuguese terms spelled with K
- Portuguese masculine nouns