Kudos – Podictionary Word of the Day iTunes users can subscribe
to this podcast Kudos means “praise.” Here’s how it’s used in a
sentence according to a piece from the New York Times: “Kudos to
Peter & Sam who highlight the fact that statistical sampling is
far more accurate…” While many, many English words are built on
Greek roots, the word kudos is a direct borrowing from Greek. In
Greek it held the figurative meaning of “praise” but the more
literal meaning of “fame” and “renown.” So when someone is given
kudos it is as if the person praising them was saying “you
deserve to be famous.” Even more literally kudos meant “that
which is heard of” and you can see the same root in kudos that
also exists in acoustic which Francis Bacon plucked from the
Greek word akouein meaning “to hear.” Kudos is said first to
have been used as slang at universities where in the late 1700s
Greek would have held a far more important position than it does
today. It isn’t given credit as actually being an English word
until 1831. As