Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I don’t want to brown-nose, I just feel like I’ve proven myself as a nominee and now they see me for who I am.
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2022
We’ve still got lovable Arkady - the underdog and rare example of a police investigator who refuses to brown-nose his superiors.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 4, 2019
“Those that, I guess you might say, brown-nose are the ones that are going to end up receiving the merit pay.”
From Washington Times ● Jan. 14, 2016
I decided to make a deliberate effort to brown-nose him for the next week.
From Time ● Sep. 8, 2011
Jane Hamsher described him as tough guy wannabe but really “a brown nose for power ready to rumble on behalf of the status quo.”
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2016
You get promoted if you brown nose your way.
From BusinessWeek ● Nov. 15, 2011
Billy Barton, by Huon and out of Mary le Bas, owned by Howard Bruce of Baltimore, will carry many thousands of pounds sterling on his dark brown nose.
From Time Magazine Archive
His flat brown nose, wide-set black eyes and triangular ebony brows had appeared in few published photos.
From Time Magazine Archive
Clay's dog put up his brown nose for a little attention, and got it.
From The Gilded Age, Part 1. by Warner, Charles Dudley
"It is appropriate that such a monster as this should have lived on a great continent like North America," brown-nosed Sir Archibald Geikie, a geologist and fellow of the Royal Society.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 4, 2013
"It's just an honour to have my name up there with all the big champions like Wiggins," Porte brown-nosed afterwards.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 12, 2013
"Obviously the manager is extremely disciplined but the manager is also cool and he's got good banter," brown-nosed Defoe, barely even convincing himself, never mind anyone else.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 18, 2010
“And when he wasn’t brown-nosing, he was talking about Bigfoot.”
From Slate ● Jan. 28, 2023
For those who think Watson suffered, stop with the celebrity brown-nosing, please.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 1, 2022
OK, now we’re heading into potential brown-nosing territory.
From Golf Digest ● Feb. 11, 2020
"Mozart in the Jungle" also depicts some of the more prosaic aspects of orchestral life — chronic financial difficulties, intractable union negotiations and the obligatory brown-nosing of wealthy patrons.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2014
But the spectre of delivering a speech brown-nosing the teachers jammed her imagination.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
