(v. t.) The act or practice of flattering; the act of pleasing by artiful commendation or compliments; adulation; false, insincere, or excessive praise.
Example Sentences:
(1) But when I started turning up at strategy meetings at 6.45am each day in Millbank Tower, key planners such as Robin Cook and Patricia Hewitt took to going into corridors and lowering their voices, making it obvious that they disapproved of my presence, which they regarded as proof of Kinnock’s fatal susceptibility to flattery.
(2) For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.” The Saudis read Trump accurately from the time he took office – they understood that he craved flattery and respect.
(3) That's because at the root of this pro-censorship case is self-flattery: the idea that one is so intrinsically Good and Noble and Elevated that one is incapable of hatred: only those warped people over there, those benighted souls, are plagued with such poison.
(4) Asked about the BBC's new venture, Ed O'Keefe, editor-in-chief of NowThis News, said: "We're blushing – imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
(5) They say that imitation is the best form of flattery.
(6) Arab leaders, especially the oil-rich monarchs, are used to flattery since they live with it every day.
(7) Read more Hunt didn’t pick this fight , but he’s deploying the strategy of every beleaguered health secretary since Aneurin Bevan: threats, flattery, promises and pledges.
(8) Even his exaggerated politeness and flattery comes across as either patronising or false.
(9) You could have been a movie star,” says Stone, looking at the screen and playing the flattery card.
(10) I think one has to be careful not to succumb to flattery.” Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, faced several questions pertaining to Trump’s appearance at the foreign policy town hall.
(11) This one is said to have belonged to a disciple, the painter Sir Peter Lely, who lavished equal flattery on the court of Charles II.
(12) In April, Minecraft received the priceless flattery of a parody on The Simpsons .
(13) One of the interesting things about Head of State is how comfortable Marr is with the ways in which information can be extracted – by journalists from politicians, by politicians from journalists, by power-brokers from each other – with a mix of flattery and veiled threat, long memories and manipulation.
(14) Asked what he thought of Sky's new Saturday schedule, which will segue from its Football League lunchtime match, to Soccer Saturday, to its new regular teatime live Premier League game and then Football First in front of a studio audience, Watson said: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
(15) The word from Fleet: 'I don't see Theresa May as another backstabber' Read more You might cling to the butler’s mole theory even as you worry that your hopes are loosening your grip on reality: the powerful faction that wanted to remain, and whispered flattery and enticements in Gove’s ear, has cleared the field of Johnson, the other side’s most powerful contender, and eased one of its own into place as PM.
(16) The negative view is the depressing capacity of right-thinking media representatives to tame "extremists", showing that everyone, even the most eccentric dissidents, are susceptible to flattery, inclusion and the kindness of power.
(17) Supervisors are alerted to hostile-dependent strategies, such as seductive flattery, that serve immediate ego-protective needs but ultimately block the attainment of fuller professional functioning.
(18) The immediate crisis can be traced back directly to Trump’s first trip abroad as president, to Riyadh on 20 May , when he was feted and showered with flattery.
(19) The Barcelona president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, continued his club’s flattery of Suárez on Wednesday when praising the forward for publicly apologising for biting the Italy defender despite his initial claim to Fifa that he fell into Chiellini teeth-first.
(20) Nobody has ever been as good as Jonathan Ross at straddling this funny-fawning axis, because it is nearly impossible (flattery has to be sincere; jokes have to be not sincere.
Sycophantic
Definition:
(a.) Alt. of Sycophantical
Example Sentences:
(1) Around the world millions would relish seeing their unaccountable, insulated leaders exposed to something harsher than a sycophantic press conference.
(2) In a Telegraph blog, published this evening, the former Tory cabinet minister deploys his trademark bluntness to warn that it is "imperative for the Tories is to establish that Mr Clegg is a pro-immigration sycophantic Europhile with no policy whatsoever, beyond defence cuts, to reduce the crippling burden of the national debt".
(3) People may heap sycophantic praise on you now, but "the poet remembers", poeta pamieta.
(4) As most establishment media figures do when quivering in the presence of national security state officials, the supremely sycophantic TV host Bob Schieffer treated Hayden like a visiting dignitary in his living room and avoided a single hard question.
(5) 20 years ago this prize would have been sycophantic but maybe more justified.
(6) Yeah … so he comes in and we’re all standing there [gesturing sycophantic applause] and he’s: ‘I’ve got you where I want you.’ Has it been hard work being Roy Keane ?
(7) And in only a handful of scenes he brought to ripe, repugnant life a sycophantic functionary in the Coen brothers' caper The Big Lebowski (1998).
(8) Twenty years ago this prize would have been sycophantic but maybe more justified.
(9) A lazily sycophantic Tory commentariat will usually swallow most of what their leaders say, regardless of what they do.
(10) So he comes in and we’re all standing there [gesturing sycophantic applause] and he’s: ‘I’ve got you where I want you.’” The former United captain also reflected on how Ferguson had withdrawn his loan players from Preston North End after his son, Darren, had been sacked as their manager – and how Stoke City, then managed by Pulis, had followed suit.
(11) I was banned from the party for standing as an independent candidate in the last general election, so I observe impartially – believing party politics to be a stagnating system, a weirdo hobby whose significance is talked up by sycophantic media.
(12) Legend has it that during a sycophantic Q&A session, the young Deng broke ranks and put a critical question to one of the most successful businessmen in the world: "Why is your business strategy in China so bad?"
(13) Members of Allende's presidential staff would remember the pre-coup Pinochet as a bluff and somewhat sycophantic officer - "the guy we would call if we needed a jeep," said one.
(14) Certainly he enjoys more influence than any other Egyptian and has a large, sycophantic following .
(15) It describes a Muslim fraternity within the governing party and an "iron ring of sycophantic but contemptuous advisers".
(16) Her love for Charles, and his for her, has a purity and nobility that has shone through the 35 years I have been writing sycophantic books and articles about the royal family.
(17) "Bill [Nicholson, the Tottenham manager] had sent our trainer Cecil Poynton over to haul us out of the pub," remembered Jimmy Greaves of his first Spurs Christmas party, possibly to a background of feeble, sycophantic laughter from Ian St John.
(18) Anyone who is actually "anti-politics" is indeed political, but sees this establishment as sycophantic, self-serving and only able to clone itself.
(19) Further comment on how he finds it should have been added parenthetically (and rather sycophantically), and not in the context of added emphasis to his regional peculiarity” – Brett Crowley.
(20) Willie Rennie, the Scottish party leader, said: "The blatant sycophantic behaviour laid out for all to see should make the first minister squirm.