A person who behaves obsequiously to someone important.
Example sentencesExamples
The newspaper and assorted other liberal apple-polishers may have accuracy on their side on this one, but they don't have balance.
He's an apple polisher who keeps dropping the apple in the mud in his frenetic attempts to please.
The reporters, shooting spitballs from the back of the class, regarded her as a preening apple-polisher.
It wasn't just the incessant whiners, or the obvious apple-polishers, or having to cover up for the occasional bad staffer that drove her nuts, she says.
We've always had to endure goody two-shoes apple-polishers - kids with their hands always up, who turn in talkers when the teacher leaves the classroom and volunteer for extra work after school.
When the other fellow pleases the boss, he's an apple polisher.
I had something close to a 4.0 in my major, and I was certainly no apple-polisher; my priorities lay more in figuring out exactly how little one had to do to earn an A.
Now, I know what you're thinking - ‘y'know, he's pretty moody sometimes too, so why should I care about these apple-polishers?’
If all those apple polishers got into a fight, who do you think would win?
If a boss closes one eye to the weaknesses of apple-polishers, soon or later the company will close shopand he might as well close both eyes!
Derivatives
apple-polishing
noun
North American informal
And when a bunch of politicians and so-called academicians held such seminars praising the PM, you know that apple-polishing has gone to the extreme.
Example sentencesExamples
Through this formula, you can see that apple polishing establishes a faulty logical connection.
Another way that is just as effective as apple-polishing is flattery, giving someone high praise, telling him how good he looks, or how well he speaks, or how wise he is.
Note that apple polishing can take subtle forms, for example, ‘Youre too intelligent to believe in mental telepathy.’
There was no apple-polishing, no flattering the Governor.