An obsequious and flattering subordinate; ass-kisser: Joe Davies, Roosevelt's yes-man at the Kremlin/ This president doesn't want yes-men
[1913+; said to have appeared first in a 1913 drawing by the sports cartoonist T A Dorgan, showing a group of newspaper assistants, each labeled yes-man, all firmly agreeing with their chief; perhaps fr German Jaherr, cited in 1941 as ''long current'']