Kudos

How to spell kudos

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kudos

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kudos mean?

1. nounPraise, credit, or recognition given for an achievement.

Kudos in a sentence

• The volunteers earned plenty of kudos for organising the festival.

• Much of the kudos for the project belongs to the design team.

Where does kudos come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Kudos comes straight from the ancient Greek word kydos, which literally meant 'glory', 'fame', or 'renown', the kind of praise a hero won in battle or in the games. It entered English in the early nineteenth century as British university slang, used by scholars who knew their Greek and applied it to academic prestige. Crucially, kydos was a singular mass noun in Greek, so 'kudos' is grammatically singular too, meaning credit or acclaim, even though the final s makes it look like an English plural. That misleading s has spawned the back-formed word 'kudo', which traditional usage treats as an error, and it explains why the spelling causes such uncertainty. The same Greek root appears in the rarer term 'kudize', and the word remains closely tied to its sense of honour earned through achievement.

How the word is built

• kudos (from Greek kydos: glory, renown); a single Greek noun adopted whole, with no separable prefix or suffix