Word.ws English Dictionary

bows and scrapes

bows and scrapes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bow and scrape.

Meaning of bow and scrape

Verb

bow and scrape (third-person singular simple present bows and scrapes, present participle bowing and scraping, simple past and past participle bowed and scraped)

  1. To make a deep bow with the right leg drawn back (thus scraping the floor), left hand pressed across the abdomen, right arm held aside.
    Synonyms:
    make a leg
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) To behave in a servile, obsequious, or excessively polite manner.
    • But he is not one of those lawyers who bow and scrape before wealthy clients. He will not be pushed around.1988 March 27, Newgate Callendar, "Crime" (book review of The Vulgar Boatman by William G. Tapply), New York Times (retrieved 25 Nov 2012)

See all 3 meanings of bow and scrape

Questions about bows and scrapes

What is bows and scrapes the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Bows and scrapes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bow and scrape.

Words near bows and scrapes in the dictionary

  1. Bowrington
  2. Bowron
  3. Bowrons
  4. bows
  5. bows and arrows
  6. bows and scrapes
  7. bows down
  8. bows down before the porcelain god
  9. bows in
  10. bows out
  11. bows to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bows and scrapes (page history and authors); bow and scrape (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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Cite this entry: “bows and scrapes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bows_and_scrapes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.