kowtow

1. 1.

   a former Chinese custom of touching the ground with the forehead as a sign of respect or submission

   Synonymskotow

   Broaderbow

Other forms of kowtow

plural

kowtows·

past tense

kowtowed·

present participle

kowtowing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about kowtow

What does kowtow mean?

kowtow means "bend the knees and bow in a servile manner". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in kowtow?

kowtow has 2 syllables: kow-tow. The stress falls on "kow". In IPA it is /ˈkaʊˈtaʊ/.

What is another word for kowtow?

Close synonyms include scrape, genuflect, fawn, toady, truckle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is kowtow a common word?

kowtow is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with kowtow?

1 word rhymes with kowtow. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.