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Use kowtow in a sentence

Definition of kowtow:

  • (noun) a former Chinese custom of touching the ground with the forehead as a sign of respect or submission
  • (verb) bend the knees and bow in a servile manner
  • (verb) try to gain favor by cringing or flattering;

Sentence Examples:

Kowtowing to them Portuguese because a few folks that's sorry for them have made them presents.

Indeed, the whole papacy amounts to nothing more than a mere kowtowing of persons and outward mummery.

Though just roused from the midst of sleep, he came to us smiling, and kowtowed with courtly politeness.

Martin was a sycophant and a kowtowing old snob, and that he knew her well; and as for my going on the stage!

Wodehouse had gone suddenly crazy, but she retained her self-possession and gracefully returned Sir John's bow, which was a kind of salaam or kowtow.

The unmarried woman of today is the head saleslady in some big house, drawing as big a salary as most men, and the world kowtows to her.

Many went down on their knees, supplicating with heads bent to the ground in kowtow, and in that attitude were butchered mercilessly by the conquering army.

He and she would live regally in one of those very houses, and people should kowtow to her because she was the dazzling wife of the renowned young architect, George Cannon.

He saw himself being cut, being ignored, by those who had been glad to kowtow before him for his favor, being elbowed aside as though he were a thing unclean and leprous.

Two eunuchs had fallen on their knees and were now kowtowing and begging with renewed vigor, while a third was standing more resolutely than his fellows with outstretched arms, imperatively forbidding any further advance.

He advanced and kowtowed before the dais with its strange figure, and laid down an offering before it, consisting of punk sticks, little dishes of Chinese cakes, rice, a jar of oil, and some cooked chicken and pork.

In the sudden silence, the widows shifted their eyes nervously around the crowded court, fearful of the awesome power of the great Emperor Euphrates that so many should automatically kowtow to him with such unfailing ritual precision.

The commissioner, who drove up in a dog cart ornamented with two footmen in scarlet and white livery, and who marched with majestic tread through a lane of kowtowing inferiors, certainly had not come without his breakfast.

During the ceremony, an official crier used to call out the different orders, such as when to kneel, bow, stand up, kowtow, etc., etc., but with the noise it was quite impossible to hear a single word of what he uttered.

This submissiveness to lay politicians led to a general decline of respect for German academic medicine not only on the part of their own public and abroad but even on the part of the very same politicians before whom they kowtowed.

Try to keep out of his way as much as possible, if you have any personal integrity, or kowtow to him, grovel in his presence, sneer with him at his other victims, flatter him, and hope he will direct his sadistic streak elsewhere.

It remains for the one institution which constantly puts on airs of superior virtue, and which expects to take front seats on all occasions and to have everybody kowtow to it, to come with the beggar's whine, and to demand charity of the state.

It is there even in the days of courtship, when a man's work, a man's clothes, a man's views on bimetallism are sacred; in those days, the woman must kowtow to the man's work, just as he must keep on good terms with her pet dog.

This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice, certainly wasn't in his genes.

I have neither title nor official position, but I am an independent fellow, and to have an independent fellow kowtow to you in acknowledgment of the favor you extend him should be considered as far more than a return acknowledgment with a million yen.

The man's body tilted forward to meet his rising arm, the upward impetus was one-sided, and every man who saluted Brown immediately made a spectacular kowtow which left him rigidly at salute floating somewhere overhead with his back to Lieutenant Brown.

And as he penetrated into one shop after another, receiving kowtows, obeisances, curtsies, homage, surrender, resignation, submission, he gradually comprehended that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that those who are called to greatness must accept with dignity the ceremonials inseparable from greatness.

Deeply kowtowing, imploring pardon, with raised hands and tears which no son dare neglect, she besought the Emperor to enlighten her as to this mystery, recounting his praises of the lady and his admission that he had never beheld her, and all the circumstances connected with this remarkable episode.