Word.ws English Dictionary

kootoo

kootoo is the obsolete spelling of kowtow.

Meaning of kowtow

Verb

kowtow (third-person singular simple present kowtows, present participle kowtowing, simple past and past participle kowtowed)

  1. (historical, intransitive) To kneel and bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground.
    • 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, →ISBN, page 645
  2. (figuratively, intransitive) To grovel, act in a very submissive manner; to show obeisance to (someone or something) in such a manner; to bow.
    • 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)
  3. (intransitive) To bow very deeply.

See all 4 meanings of kowtow

Forms of kootoo

third-person singular presentkootoos
present participlekootooing
past participlekootooed
pastkootooed
past participlekootoo'd
pastkootoo'd

Questions about kootoo

What is kootoo the obsolete spelling of?
Kootoo is the obsolete spelling of kowtow.

Words near kootoo in the dictionary

  1. Kootenai
  2. Kootenai County
  3. Kootenay
  4. Kootenay Boundary
  5. Kootingal
  6. kootoo
  7. kootoo'd
  8. kootooed
  9. kootooing
  10. kootoos
  11. Koots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kootoo (page history and authors); kowtow (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: “kootoo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kootoo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.