brown-nose
brown-nose is the alternative form of brownnose.
Meaning of brownnose
Noun
brownnose (plural brownnoses)
- One who sucks up; a bootlicker or sycophant.
- A workmate reported the matter, "which is why the worker threatened to beat up the latter," calling him a "brownnose" and threatening to "wipe the floor with him."1997, Ulrich Herbert, Hitler's foreign workers: enforced foreign labor in Germany under the Third Reich, Cambridge University Press, page 126
- Synonyms:
- bootlick, brown noser, adulator, apple polisher, arse-kisser, arse-licker, ass-kisser, ass-licker, bootlicker, buttkisser
Forms of brown-nose
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | brown-noses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | brown-noses |
| present participle | brown-nosing |
| past participle | brown-nosed |
| past | brown-nosed |
Questions about brown-nose
- What is brown-nose the alternative form of?
- Brown-nose is the alternative form of brownnose.
Words near brown-nose in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: brown-nose (page history and authors); brownnose (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “brown-nose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brown-nose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.