1. Brown-nose (third-person singular simple present brown-noses, present participle brown-nosing, simple past and past participle brown-nosed) Alternative spelling of Brownnose

2. This is the first book-length study of Plautus' shortest surviving comedy, Curculio, a play in which the tricksy brown-nosed title character (“The Weevil”) bamboozles a shady banker and a pious pimp to secure the freedom of the enslaved girl his patron has fallen for while keeping her out of the clutches of a megalomaniacal soldier.