Sycophant

Definitions

1. One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
2. One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
3. An informer; a talebearer.
   obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

“A sycophant will everything admire: / Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire”

“VVhile a mean⟳ Crovvd of Sycophants attend⟳, / And favvn and flatter, creep⟳ and cringe and bend⟳; / The Fav'rite bleſſes his ſuperior State, / Riſes o'er all, and hails Himſelf the Great.”

“The latest act in the Madness of King Donald drama playing globally on every channel underlined the increasingly delusional world the anti-hero inhabits, his fantasies fed and indulged by a cast⟳ of sycophants, lackeys and straight grifters, all in it for what they can get⟳.”

“[H]is mind⟳ had no eye to espy goodness; and therefore accusing sycophants, of all men, did best sort⟳ to his nature.”

The New Arcadia

CEFR level