kowtowing
kowtowing is the present participle and gerund of kowtow.
Meaning of kowtow
Verb
kowtow (third-person singular simple present kowtows, present participle kowtowing, simple past and past participle kowtowed)
- 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
- 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)
- To bow very deeply.
Noun
kowtowing (plural kowtowings)
- The act of one who kowtows; a submissive bow.
- Yoritomo met their smiles and kowtowings and noisy insuckings of breath with an austere dignity that I took pains to imitate.1910, Robert Ames Bennet, The Shogun's Daughter
Forms of kowtowing
| plural | kowtowings |
|---|
Questions about kowtowing
- What does kowtowing mean?
- Kowtowing means the act of one who kowtows; a submissive bow.
- What is kowtowing the present participle and gerund of?
- Kowtowing is the present participle and gerund of kowtow.
- What part of speech is kowtowing?
- Kowtowing is a noun.
- What is the plural of kowtowing?
- The plural of kowtowing is kowtowings.
Words near kowtowing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kowtowing (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: “kowtowing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kowtowing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.