Word.ws English Dictionary

kiss-up

kiss-up noun: one who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention.

Noun

kiss-up (plural kiss-ups)

  1. (colloquial) One who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention
    • Joe got that promotion because he was a kiss-up, not because he knew the job.

Forms of kiss-up

pluralkiss-ups

Origin of kiss-up

Deverbal from kiss up.

Questions about kiss-up

What does kiss-up mean?
Kiss-up means one who flatters a supervisor, or superior, in order to get special attention.
What part of speech is kiss-up?
Kiss-up is a noun.
What is the plural of kiss-up?
The plural of kiss-up is kiss-ups.

Words near kiss-up in the dictionary

  1. kiss-me-over-the-garden-gates
  2. kiss-me-quick
  3. kiss-me-quicks
  4. kiss-off
  5. kiss-offs
  6. kiss-up
  7. kiss-ups
  8. kissa
  9. kissability
  10. kissable
  11. kissableness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kiss-up (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: “kiss-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kiss-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.