Kudo

//ˈkuː.dəʊ// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A compliment or praise. nonstandard, proscribed, sometimes

    "Tycoon George Fisher Baker built Harvard's Business School in 1924, was given a kudo Ph.D."

Verb
  1. 1
    To give a compliment or praise to. nonstandard, proscribed, transitive

    "The magazines kudoed the spectacular African wild animal adventure film as being "an outstanding motion picture as voted by the editors.""

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname from Japanese.

Example

More examples

"Tycoon George Fisher Baker built Harvard's Business School in 1924, was given a kudo Ph.D."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Back-formation from kudos, as if it were a plural with -s.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Japanese 工藤 (Kudō).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.