bow and scrape

Idioms  

1. Behave obsequiously or too deferentially, as in In this fashionable store, the salespersons virtually bow and scrape before customers. This term alludes to the old-fashioned custom of bowing so deeply that one's foot draws back and scrapes the ground. A cliché for a century or more, it may be dying out. [Mid-1600s]

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Example Sentences

Raoul worries she’s been jailed, a word Frida needs to define for her: “You know, a small enclosed space where you can’t get in and out of your own accord, but must always bow and scrape and do tricks in order to achieve some sort of self-realization,” she explains.

From Washington Post

“I hope our Taiwan friends really go for it, and with their votes show the Taiwan people’s determination to refuse to bow and scrape before Beijing. This is the greatest support you can give Hong Kong,” he wrote on Facebook.

From Reuters

I will not bow and scrape before my supposed benefactors.

From Washington Post

Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.

From New York Times

Adapted, from the French film of the same name, by Emma Rice, the Globe’s soon-to-depart artistic director, it’s about a tradition-bucking heroine too timid to stand up for her own genius, whose colleagues bow and scrape before an inscrutable man-fool they’ve been told is a savant.

From New York Times