idiom of the day idiom: 'brown-nosing' someone example: "Yeah, that kid did some major brown nosing to his teacher in the last of the semester--he was worried he was going to get an 'F' and flunk out." Meaning: Brown nosing is when someone attempts to gain favor with another person (often times people of higher status, such as a teacher or an employer). There are usually common characteristics of people when they're called 'brown nosers'. They usually are pretending to care about the person they are 'brown nosing', but really don't and quite frequently the things they do to gain favor would put them in a position of humiliation (this is not always the case, but quite frequently).