Brown noser meaning: someone who flatters the boss
A brown-noser is someone who flatters people in charge to get ahead. They agree too fast, laugh first at the boss's jokes, praise too loudly and volunteer where the boss can see. It's an informal insult, and a crude one once you know the picture behind it.
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He laughed at every joke in the director's speech, Mira. Total brown-noser.
What did they mean?
Filed under B jargon.
What a brown-noser is
The colleague who flatters upward
A brown-noser is a colleague who flatters people above them to get ahead. It’s also written brown noser or brownnoser. The verb is brown-nose, and the habit is brown-nosing.
Brown-nosing is flattery done where other people can see it. Thanking your manager is good manners. Praising their vision in a reply-all, within four minutes of their email, is brown-nosing.
What brown-nosing looks like at work
It looks like small gestures the boss will notice. None of them breaks a rule.
- Laughing first, and longest, at the boss’s joke in the all-hands.
- Volunteering for the 7 am optional run because the director runs.
- Copying the boss on every win, and nobody on the misses.
- Ending a self-review with a paragraph about how inspiring their manager is.
Where brown-noser comes from
The 1939 slang behind the word
Brown-nose is American slang first recorded in 1939, reportedly from the military. The image is a nose pressed into a superior’s backside.
| Word | First recorded |
|---|---|
| Brown-noser | By 1945 |
| Brown-nosing | By 1950 |
| Bumsucker, Britain’s older word for a sycophant | 1877 |
A crude word that sounds polite
Brown-noser doesn’t sound crude until you picture it, and most people say it without doing that. You hear it in group chats, and between friends as “don’t be a brown-noser”.
Keen, or brown-nosing
Being keen isn’t brown-nosing if the work gets better. If only the boss’s impression of you improves, it is.
Timing gives it away. The extra effort peaks in the weeks before reviews and promotions.
Brown-nosing and what offices reward
Visibility as a performance
Brown-nosing is like looking busy at work, except it’s aimed at one person. 66% of US full-time workers admit to some form of productivity theater, putting on a show of working.
| US full-time workers who | Share |
|---|---|
| Took on extra tasks just to be seen | 34% |
| Stayed late to be noticed | 33% |
| Say visibility gets rewarded at least sometimes | 64% |
| Say they’re measured on results | 23% |
Brown-noser, believer, best friend
When the boss announces a new plan anywhere in corporate America, four kinds of people react, and the brown-noser is easy to mix up with the other three. You tell them apart by what each one does with the plan.
| Who | What they do with the plan |
|---|---|
| A brown-noser | Praises it out loud because it helps them |
| Someone who’s drunk the Kool-Aid | Believes it, which is worse for meetings and better for morale |
| A work wife | Tells you it’s bad, quietly, on the walk to the elevator |
| A LinkedIn poster | Congratulates leadership with hashtags, which our LinkedIn speak translator can put back into English |
Praise that doesn’t count as brown-nosing
Credit a teammate by name in front of their manager. Say what they did, say it once, and nobody calls it brown-nosing, because the praise helps your teammate more than it helps you.
A message that dodges the label
#general, Friday 4:12 pm
Not to be a
brown-nosersuck-up, but the new expense tool took me 4 minutes instead of 40. Whoever fought for it in procurement, thank you. Receipts from the offsite are in.
The disclaimer works because the thanks go to the people in procurement. The boss isn’t in the message at all.
Most words in our corporate jargon dictionary are said with a straight face. Brown-noser is mostly said by someone promising they aren’t one.
Brown-noser in a sentence
He laughed at every joke in the director's speech, Mira. Total brown-noser.
Bringing the director a coffee on day one makes you look like a brown-noser, Nils.
The brown-noser in sales just volunteered the whole team for Saturday's client event.
The anonymous survey asks if promotions here reward results or brown-nosing, Emeka.
Questions about brown-noser
What does the phrase "brown-nosing" mean?
Brown-nosing means trying too hard to please someone in authority, usually to win favor. The people around you find it grating. Flattering the boss counts, and so does agreeing with them on the spot or putting in extra effort only where they can see it.
Is brown nose a derogatory term?
Yes, it's an informal insult with a crude origin, so it doesn't belong in a performance review or a formal complaint. Among friends it's a tease. Say it about a colleague in a meeting and HR may hear about it.
Where did the expression "brown nose" come from?
It's American slang from 1939, reportedly from the military. The picture is crude on purpose. The flatterer's nose ends up somewhere on the boss that sunlight doesn't reach.
What is the professional term for brown-nosing?
The dictionary words for brown-nosing, ingratiate and sycophancy, are themselves labeled disapproving. To ingratiate yourself is to make someone like you by praising or trying to please them, and sycophancy is insincere praise of powerful people. In a review, describe the behavior instead.
What does it mean when someone says your nose is brown?
It means they think you've been brown-nosing, flattering the boss to get ahead. The brown nose is the same crude picture as in brown-noser. It's usually said as a tease, right after you laugh at the boss's joke.