remember when obtaining a mortgage for a house required a great deal of forelock-tugging?
Example sentencesExamples
This is the public image of liberalism, with its mealy-mouthed, enabling, sycophantic forelock-tugging and constant expressions of obeisance to an establishment that holds them in contempt.
Smith's appropriation of Joyce smells neither of a lack of inspiration nor of gratuitous forelock-tugging.
Do you not understand that the days of forelock-tugging, bowing and scraping and knowing your place are over?
Rejecting any forelock-tugging and any undue deference to his "betters", Hardy is a plain-speaking man.
Does that mean more forelock-tugging to the government and rattling the begging bowl to pay for this exciting departure?
Disappointingly, but expectedly, most of the resulting articles have been a mixture of ignorance and/or forelock-tugging.
I do not mean to suggest that the order came down from Rove himself; the bureaucrats are perfectly capable of forelock-tugging without outside prompting.
The days of forelock tugging and cap doffing have gone forever.
Perhaps we could start with some ritual forelock-tugging, followed by a long statement of royal allegiance.
adjective
British
Behaving in an obsequious or overly deferential way.
a simpering, forelock-tugging toady
Example sentencesExamples
Such a view wouldn't be out of place from a forelock-tugging serf in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
The hobbits' "Shire" resembles a small town in the Home Counties, full of forelock-tugging peasants and happy artisans.
Ulverton is by definition a pastoral novel, but it's an unsparingly honest one in which working-class characters who would have been colorful, forelock-tugging walk-ons in a more conventional book are given center stage and their full human capacity for truth-telling.
The way he defers to Lady Tottington shows that he's a terrible forelock-tugging snob with social ambitions.
Society has moved on from the forelock-tugging times when the lord chief justice could say, in the 1930s, without fear of ridicule: "His Majesty's judges are satisfied with the almost universal admiration in which they are held."
Bob Cratchit, played by Alan White, was the very epitome of the forelock-tugging underling.
It goes without saying that any criticism from within the pages of a trade magazine must be "constructive" and "mature", i.e., meek, respectful, forelock-tugging and not critical at all.
The driver apologises with so much forelock-tugging deference, he might as well invite you to beat him.