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Kotow   Listen
verb
Kotow  v. i.  (past & past part. kotowed; pres. part. kotowing)  
1.
To perform the kotow. Now usually spelled kowtow. (Also spelled kowtow)
2.
To defer to another in a servile or humiliating manner; to act obsequiously.


noun
Kotow  n.  (Also spelled kowtow)  Same as kowtow, the more common spellings. (China)


Kowtow  n.  (Also spelled kotow)  The prostration made by mandarins and others to their superiors, either as homage or worship, by knocking the forehead on the ground; same as Kotow. There are degrees in the rite, the highest being expressed by three knockings. (China)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Kotow" Quotes from Famous Books



... brow In a truly celestial bow, Saluted her father with filial grace, and made him the grand kotow. (For every child that's bright Knows well the rule that's right, That to knock your head on the ground nine times is the way ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Sir George Staunton distinctly and positively affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the presence of the Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without performing the prostration of the Kotow—the Chinese act of homage from the vassal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... with a hint of laughter in his heavy voice and laying a not ungentle hand on her blazing cheeks. "D' ye think I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're that kind—and I suppose you are, being a ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... street toddling images meet, And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; Their obis are tied with particular pride, Their silken kimonos hang scant to ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Wright, and he busts the glass top of his table with his fist. "It's plumb plain to see why. It's them Wisners has blocked our game. They coppered us from the start—that's what! We got in wrong at the start with them; we didn't kotow to them and ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough


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