kudos [M19th] Despite being the classical Greek for ‘praise, renown’, kudos started out as university slang and is still a rather informal word. It is more used in American English than British English, and now often means little more than ‘well done, congratulations’. As has happened with many words in the past such as *pea and *cherry, the final ‘s’ is now sometimes taken as a plural, and the form ‘kudo’ can be found.