What does "name-dropping" mean?

The practice of casually mentioning famous or important people or the titles of their works, subtly implying familiarity or association, in order to impress others.

What is a synonym for "name-dropping"?

Common synonyms include: name-checking.

Name-dropping

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The practice of casually mentioning famous or important people or the titles of their works, subtly implying familiarity or association, in order to impress others. countable, uncountable
"“The one thing I don't want anybody to do, the one thing I will not tolerate, is name-dropping. It's bad. Marlon Brando told me that.”"
2
the practice of casually mentioning important people in order to impress your listener wordnet

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of name-drop form-of, gerund, participle, present
"Our drama teacher is always name-dropping, but I bet she's never even been to New York."

Synonyms

All synonyms

name-checking

Example

More examples

"“The one thing I don't want anybody to do, the one thing I will not tolerate, is name-dropping. It's bad. Marlon Brando told me that.”"

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