{"id":12320,"date":"2008-10-28T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T08:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/kowtow.html"},"modified":"2008-10-28T08:30:18","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T08:30:18","slug":"kowtow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/10\/28\/kowtow.html","title":{"rendered":"Kowtow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"width\"><font face=\"arial,helvetica\">1: The Chinese custom of kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead in worship or submission.<\/font><\/span> <span class=\"width\"><font face=\"arial,helvetica\">2: Try to gain favor by cringing or flattering<\/font><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I seem to remember that this word was fashionable among my high school Lincoln-Douglas debaters. It has a condescending but simplistic sound to it, invoking a sodden obviousness. It was often used in the spirit of &quot;we will not kowtow to this policy&quot; and speakers lingered on the word, sinking deep into it, not simply implying but <i>informing<\/i> the other debater that their policy or attitude was condescending or insulting. I do not know if it was unusual to the culture of my high school but there seemed to exist a heightened and always-present distrust of obsequiousness. It was not so much a distrust of authority (a common enough bit of teenage angst) but a desire to even the field. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1: The Chinese custom of kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead in worship or submission. 2: Try to gain favor by cringing or flattering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-kowtow","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}