Word.ws English Dictionary

kudo

Syllables: ku·doUK/ˈkuː.dəʊ//ˈkuː.doʊ/

kudo noun: a compliment or praise.

Noun

kudo (plural kudos)

  1. (nonstandard, proscribed, sometimes) A compliment or praise.
    • Tycoon George Fisher Baker built Harvard's Business School in 1924, was given a kudo Ph.D.1929 February 18, Harkness Lampooned, Time, archived from the original on 28 Nov 2007
    • At this point we need to give this pilot a kudo.2001, Terry T. Lankford et al., Controlling Pilot Error: Controlled Flight Into Terrain, →ISBN, page 49

Verb

kudo (third-person singular simple present kudos, present participle kudoing, simple past and past participle kudoed)

  1. (nonstandard, proscribed, transitive) To give a compliment or praise to.
    • The magazines kudoed the spectacular African wild animal adventure film as being "an outstanding motion picture as voted by the editors."1962, Box Office, volume 80, page 6
    • This is more or less a stock service picture entry, kudoing the Coast Guard and the role it played in World War II beach operations.2001, Richard L. Hemenez, The United States Marine Corps in Books and the Performing Arts, page 450

Proper noun capitalized: Kudo

Kudo (plural Kudos)

  1. A surname from Japanese.

Forms of kudo

Noun
pluralkudos
Verb
third-person singular presentkudos
present participlekudoing
past participlekudoed
pastkudoed
Proper noun
pluralKudos

Origin of kudo

Back-formation from kudos, as if it were a plural with -s.

Borrowed from Japanese 工藤 (Kudō).

Words that rhyme with kudo

Questions about kudo

What does kudo mean?
Kudo means a compliment or praise.
What part of speech is kudo?
Kudo can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce kudo?
Kudo is pronounced /ˈkuː.dəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of kudo?
The plural of kudo is kudos.

Words near kudo in the dictionary

  1. kudlik
  2. kudliks
  3. Kudlow
  4. Kudmali
  5. Kudna
  6. kudo
  7. kudoed
  8. kudoing
  9. kudologist
  10. kudologists
  11. kudology

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kudo (page history and authors); Kudo (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-kudo.ogg.

Cite this entry: “kudo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kudo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.