What's the difference between flatter and sycophant?

Flatter


Definition:

  • (n.) One who, or that which, makes flat or flattens.
  • (n.) A flat-faced fulling hammer.
  • (n.) A drawplate with a narrow, rectangular orifice, for drawing flat strips, as watch springs, etc.
  • (v. t.) To treat with praise or blandishments; to gratify or attempt to gratify the self-love or vanity of, esp. by artful and interested commendation or attentions; to blandish; to cajole; to wheedle.
  • (v. t.) To raise hopes in; to encourage or favorable, but sometimes unfounded or deceitful, representations.
  • (v. t.) To portray too favorably; to give a too favorable idea of; as, his portrait flatters him.
  • (v. i.) To use flattery or insincere praise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In platform shoes to emulate Johnson's height, and with the aid of prosthetic earlobes, Cranston becomes the 36th president: he bullies and cajoles, flatters and snarls and barks, tells dirty jokes or glows with idealism as required, and delivers the famous "Johnson treatment" to everyone from Martin Luther King to the racist Alabama governor George Wallace.
  • (2) With profound blockade, the slope of the edrophonium dose-response relationship was significantly flatter (P less than 0.05) than that of neostigmine.
  • (3) The groups showed significantly different iEMG fatigue slopes, with the control group showing declining iEMG by repetition, while the CLBP group showed flatter, slightly increasing iEMG.
  • (4) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage ’flattered’ by Trump’s call for him to be US ambassador In another shot at Obama, referring to remarks by the US president before the Brexit vote about the possible trade consequences of Britain leaving Europe, Farage said: “No longer do we have a president who says that we’re at the back of the line.” Everything you need to know about Trump and the Indiana Carrier factory Read more He also said Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent, had “wanted the European Union to be a prototype for a bigger model across the whole world”.
  • (5) "It may not be nice, kind or flattering, but to put it as unlawful would be startling," White said.
  • (6) Carbamazepine has a flatter concentration-time profile than valproic acid.
  • (7) Flattered, entreated, begged by the rest of the committee, he did not yield: "Recommendations are recommendations, there it is"; and "I honestly believe it's all there"; "I promise you I have done my very best"; "if I hadn't thought my recommendations were fit for purpose, I would not have made them"; "with all due respect, I could not have done any more than I did".
  • (8) Perhaps the most flattering epitaph for Ronnie Biggs, who has died aged 84, was written for him many years ago by the unlikely figure of the former commissioner of the Metropolitan police Sir Robert Mark .
  • (9) "So that was very flattering and a little surprising," she says.
  • (10) When spectrin was rebound to the erythrocyte membrane, a decay in the anisotropy was still present but was markedly less sensitive to solution viscosity and flatter at longer times.
  • (11) Things are different now: wonks observe that we’ve got lucky with the chairs – Margaret Hodge on the public accounts committee (PAC), Rory Stewart on defence, Sarah Wollaston on health – but committee work is flattered mainly by comparison with everything else.
  • (12) We praise and flatter each other and automatically learn the details of each other's lives.
  • (13) One-day chicks displayed reliably flatter generalization gradients than 3-4-day chicks.
  • (14) Early flattering comparisons were made with the Strokes and Sonic Youth.
  • (15) Their pay structure is flatter and their sense of responsibility to the community stronger.
  • (16) I will propose a new school funding model from the commonwealth which will be flatter, simpler, fairer to all the states and territories and equitable between students,” he said.
  • (17) The instantaneous I-V curve was linear while in the steady state the curve became flatter at low negative membrane potentials and steeper at high negative membrane potentials.
  • (18) To describe this course of action as "clutching at straws" is to flatter it.
  • (19) She should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them.
  • (20) The steeper the curve of Spee, the more irregular the cusp height and angulations are with steeper anterior cusps and flatter posterior cusps.

Sycophant


Definition:

  • (n.) An informer; a talebearer.
  • (n.) A base parasite; a mean or servile flatterer; especially, a flatterer of princes and great men.
  • (v. t.) To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
  • (v. t.) To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.
  • (v. i.) To play the sycophant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most credulous sycophants.
  • (2) Choe also accused the European Union and Japan, the resolution’s co-sponsors, of “subservience and sycophancy” to the United States, and he promised “unpredictable and serious consequences” if the resolution went forward.
  • (3) She protests to the satisfaction only of sycophants and fools that this is “just another title” – as in just another title to add to the 69 that have gone before, 21 of those majors, with the added value of being her fourth of the year, the fabled grand slam.
  • (4) Former Trump campaign manager and CNN’s resident Trump sycophant Corey Lewandowski said the paper “should be held accountable”, adding: “I hope he sues them into oblivion for doing this.” Yet they couldn’t be happier with the hacked emails from Clinton’s campaign manager that were leaked to WikiLeaks and published late last week.
  • (5) The education secretary, Michael Gove, was forced to disown his most senior aide after his former special adviser described David Cameron as bumbling, the No 10 chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, as a sycophant presiding over a shambolic court, and the direct of communications, Craig Oliver, as clueless.
  • (6) While the congress's 2,268 party delegates are technically responsible for workshopping their leaders' reports, many have opted to err on the side of sycophancy rather than genuine criticism.
  • (7) She gets nothing but sycophancy from her privy counsellors, so why not ask those paid to watch the entrails of the sacred geese, the economists?
  • (8) Maybe there is a secret to be examined, then, in Chinatown, where he works out to a backdrop of sycophancy and awe.
  • (9) Her instincts are suboptimal.” A stout defender of Clinton in public, in private Tanden injects some bracing honesty that suggests the candidate is not surrounded by sycophants.
  • (10) "His actions, surrounding himself with an old boys' club of like-minded sycophants, are dictatorial, in sharp contrast to those of David Cameron, who has shown he can listen, adapt and do what is right for the country, not just for personal gain."
  • (11) Gove was forced to disown his former senior aide for describing Cameron as bumbling, the No 10 chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, as a sycophant presiding over a shambolic court, and the direct of communications, Craig Oliver, as clueless.
  • (12) "The first time was in her house in Soweto and it was very disturbing: too many sycophants, too many who believe she's God."
  • (13) It is clear that voters in sufficient number realised that the real aim was to establish an Orwellian structure – a “ Mukhabarat state” consolidated around the AKP and run by an inner circle of sycophants.
  • (14) It's commonly thought that people in authority are surrounded by sycophants who never tell them how bad things are.
  • (15) The slightest scent of sycophancy always set Simon's nostrils twitching.
  • (16) It would take a generation to replace the sycophants who let Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rip their party’s values to shreds.
  • (17) Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but they seemed not to want to be familiar, in case it looked like sycophancy, but not to want to be unfamiliar, in case it looked like disapproval, and then, caught in the headlights of friendliness, unable to remember how friendly they had been last time.
  • (18) What was interesting was the way it made others act: we realised currying favour with the boss was the way to ensure we made enough to make the job worth our while, but also that overt sycophancy would have the opposite effect.
  • (19) You’re not supposed to be sycophants,” he told them.
  • (20) I guess if you are accustomed to being surrounded by the sycophancy of power that can be unsettling.