Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US milit.) anyone who pays excessive court to authority, at school, in work etc.

1941		A.W. Jernberg My Brush Monkeys 148: No enrollee wanted to run the risk of being branded a ‘brown-noser.’ A brown-noser [...] was given all kinds of cures; usually the silent cure.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 29: ‘Dynamite’ Holmes, boxing coach, horseman, and number one brownnoser with our Great White Father Colonel Delbert. [Ibid.] 96: I could have. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t be a brown noser.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 221: They’re not kidding down there, those Harvard brown-nosers.
1976		P. Conroy Great Santini (1977) 296: Oh, a thousand pardons, little brown-noser.
1988		M. Atwood Cat’s Eye (1989) 208: They [girls] can be brains and sucks and brown-nosers, like boys, if they are thought to study too much.
1990		(con. c.1970) G. Hasford Phantom Blooper 28: This area is off limits to that fucking pogue lifer and his brown-nosers until we give him a First Platoon passport.
2001		trish9095 posting about article by Therese Droste ‘Do It Your Way’ on Monster Admin/Support Forum 8 Nov. 🌐 The reason the brownnoser’s ‘nose’ is always brown is for the simple fact they ‘keep their nose’ so far up managements ass, they tend to eat, smell and live the BS they produce.
2004		Arizona Dly Star (Tucson, AZ) 12 July D3/1: Every office has a brown-noser, someone who sucks up to his or her boss.
2009		T. Black Gutted 202: Loose-moralled little brown-noser with an eye on the big office, the Beemer, the whole ball of wax.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 325: You’re probably right about him being a brownnoser but you need to get over it.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 337: ‘[A] coterie of sycophants, brown-nosers and quacks calling the shots’.