- 1
To kowtow to someone is to be too eager to please them, especially someone with power — you agree too fast, you flatter them, you do not stand up for yourself. It is not a compliment. Papers use it when they think a government or a company is bending too far. You can also use it as a noun: a kowtow. Though actually, the older meaning is a real movement of the body: you and knock your forehead on the floor, a deep show of respect in old Chinese court life. English borrowed the word for that bow, then stretched it to any over-eager obedience, even when nobody is on the floor. In modern English the stretched meaning is the one you will meet most.
巴結、卑躬屈膝（字面原是「叩頭」）
組成From Cantonese 叩頭 (kau tau) or Mandarin 叩頭 (kòutóu), literally “knock head.”
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
kowtowverb/ˈkaʊˌtaʊ/
- 1
historicalTo kneel and bow low enough to touch one’s forehead to the ground.
- When the weather turned cold, the tears that he shed would become frozen like veins; the blood on his forehead from kowtowing would also freeze and would not drip.
- 2
To grovel, act in a very submissive manner; to show obeisance to (someone or something) in such a manner; to bow.
- I suppose you're going to be nice to Odie and kowtow to Jon and lick the mailman's boots! I don't like you already.
- The letter to Razin contained another thought that preoccupied Stalin in the first months after the war: the need to avoid “kowtowing to the West,” including showing “unwarranted respect” for the “military authorities of Germany.”
- 3
To bow very deeply.
kowtownoun/ˈkaʊˌtaʊ/
- 1
The act of kowtowing.
- Three elders dressed in their long silk ceremonial gowns perform the kowtow before the altar in their clan ancestral hall.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。