Definition of "kowtow"

kowtow

/ˈkaʊˌtaʊ/

verb
third-person singular simple present kowtows, present participle kowtowing, simple past and past participle kowtowed
1. (intransitive, figuratively) To grovel, act in a very submissive manner.
  Quotations
  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.
  1984 December 30, Jim Davis, Garfield‎ (comic)
  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.”
  2015, Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator, Yale University Press, page 265
2. (intransitive, historical) To kneel and bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground.
  Quotations
  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.
  2013, Wendy Swartz, Robert Ford Campany, Yang Lu, Jessey J. C. Choo, Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook, Columbia University Press, page 645
3. (intransitive) To bow very deeply.
4. (by extension) To bow to or show obeisance to.
noun
plural kowtows
1. The act of kowtowing.
  Quotations
  Three elders dressed in their long silk ceremonial gowns perform the kowtow before the altar in their clan ancestral hall.
  1990, Hugh D. R. Baker, Hong Kong Images: People and Animals, Hong Kong University Press, page 93

Definition of "kowtow"

kowtow

verb

Quotations

Quotations

noun

Quotations