What's the difference between influential and sycophant?

Influential


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The influential Belgian scientist Quetelet demonstrated a remarkable scotoma towards the phenomenon.
  • (2) I care far more that women are absolutely essential to political life, influential at every level, and are leading dynamic conversations in the public sphere around social and cultural change.
  • (3) Phosphate was the most influential milk salts component that protected the cells and promoted repair of injury.
  • (4) McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate with an influential voice on US foreign affairs, is seen by the Obama administration as a potentially important intermediary in its intensive push to persuade Congress to swing behind the plan for airstrikes .
  • (5) Fry, who has more than six million followers on Twitter, is an influential voice in the campaign to boycott the Sochi Games, comparing the situation to the decision to hold the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.
  • (6) Alcohol and drugs are influential in providing a feeling of hopelessness by their toxic effects, by disruption of interpersonal relationships and social supports, and, possibly, by manipulating neurotransmitters responsible for mood and judgment.
  • (7) Even more influentially, it was a mostly black community.
  • (8) One of the Conservative party's most influential voices on defence has conceded that Britain can no longer be regarded as a "division-one military power", and raised questions over the sense of replacing the Trident nuclear fleet with a new generation of missile-launching submarines.
  • (9) He moved on to Tunis and Paris, and became editor-in-chief of the influential literary review Al-Karmel.
  • (10) An amendment from George Eustice, a new but influential MP who used to work for Cameron, calls on the coalition to publish a white paper in the next two years setting out which powers ministers would repatriate from Brussels.
  • (11) In the process, PR firms have grown even more influential in shaping the debate around climate policy, said James Hoggan, who ran his own public relations firm in Vancouver and founded DeSmogBlog , a blog that describes itself as “clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science”.
  • (12) This approach to circumscription is inspired by the influential work of John McCarthy at Stanford University.
  • (13) Survey data were collected from a sample of 298 occupational therapy department directors on (a) department demographics; (b) availability of micro- or macrocomputers; (c) types of hardware, software, and peripheral devices used; (d) major purposes and functions for computers; and (e) major factors regarding choice of computers and equipment or factors most influential in the nonuse of computers.
  • (14) Children are taught to use condoms there,” Pokrovsky said, indicating that was hardly imaginable in modern Russia where the Orthodox church is growing increasingly influential.
  • (15) 2 groups who were particularly influential were the doctors and the academic eugenists.
  • (16) Multiple regression of this preventive orientation index on selected independent variables showed that, for the entire sample, variables representing involvement in academic and institutional dentistry, exposure to education through journals and courses, a predeliction for innovation, and the presence of a hygienist in the office, were most influential in creating a model that successfully predicted reported preventive behavior.
  • (17) But the remarks by Gross, whose pronouncements on bond markets are regarded as highly influential, added to the sense that the economy remained in a dangerously parlous state.
  • (18) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
  • (19) In the 1970s, Marco Panella’s Radical party was influential in marshalling opposition to the “partitocracy” dominated by the then Christian Democrats and in championing civil rights on issues such as divorce and abortion.
  • (20) This study suggests that for children whole-day heart rate monitoring is an objective, nonobtrusive method for measuring physical activity; and maturation, but not gender, is an influential mediating factor for activity.

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.