kiss ass

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

to flatter or try to win favor by flattering people

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

nịnh bợ hoặc cố gắng lấy lòng bằng cách tán dương

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to kiss someone's buttocks
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

If I wanted to kiss ass with the business, which I've never done, then that's what I'd do.
Baker grew out of a mixture of punk and funk, but didn't kiss the ass of either in print.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “kiss ass” mean?

to flatter or try to win favor by flattering people Literally: to kiss someone's buttocks

Is “kiss ass” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.