Word.ws English Dictionary

bowing down

bowing down is the present participle and gerund of bow down.

Meaning of bow down

Verb

bow down (third-person singular simple present bows down, present participle bowing down, simple past and past participle bowed down)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To bow, to bend oneself as a gesture of deference or respect.
    • 8 Thou shalt not make thee any grauen image, or any likenesse of any thing that is in heauen aboue, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth.
      9 Thou shalt not bow downe thy selfe vnto them, nor serue them: for I the Lord thy God am a ielous God, visiting the...1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 5:8–10
  2. (intransitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To submit to another; to acknowledge one's inferiority to another.
    • You better bow down to my skills.

Questions about bowing down

What is bowing down the present participle and gerund of?
Bowing down is the present participle and gerund of bow down.

Words near bowing down in the dictionary

  1. bowies
  2. Bowiesque
  3. bowing
  4. bowing acquaintance
  5. bowing and scraping
  6. bowing down
  7. bowing down before the porcelain god
  8. bowing in
  9. bowing out
  10. bowing stone
  11. bowing stones

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowing down (page history and authors); bow down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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