Word.ws English Dictionary

name-dropping

name-dropping noun: the practice of casually mentioning famous or important people or the titles of their works, subtly implying familiarity or association, in order to impress others. Also the present participle and gerund of name-drop.

Noun

name-dropping (countable and uncountable, plural name-droppings)

  1. The practice of casually mentioning famous or important people or the titles of their works, subtly implying familiarity or association, in order to impress others.
    • “The one thing I don't want anybody to do, the one thing I will not tolerate, is name-dropping. It's bad. Marlon Brando told me that.”1997, Chris Chase, Name Dropping, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 14
    Synonyms:
    name-checking

Also used as

name-dropping is also the present participle and gerund of name-drop.

Synonyms of name-dropping

Forms of name-dropping

pluralname-droppings
alternative formname dropping
alternative formnamedropping

Questions about name-dropping

What does name-dropping mean?
Name-dropping means the practice of casually mentioning famous or important people or the titles of their works, subtly implying familiarity or association, in order to impress others.
What part of speech is name-dropping?
Name-dropping is a noun.
What is the plural of name-dropping?
The plural of name-dropping is name-droppings.

Words near name-dropping in the dictionary

  1. name-children
  2. name-drop
  3. name-dropped
  4. name-dropper
  5. name-droppers
  6. name-dropping
  7. name-droppings
  8. name-drops
  9. name-giving
  10. name-givings
  11. name-letter effect

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: name-dropping (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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