What's the difference between obsequious and sycophant?

Obsequious


Definition:

  • (a.) Promptly obedient, or submissive, to the will of another; compliant; yielding to the desires of another; devoted.
  • (a.) Servilely or meanly attentive; compliant to excess; cringing; fawning; as, obsequious flatterer, parasite.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to obsequies; funereal.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Labour too had "sort of fallen to their knees obsequiously towards very powerful vested interests in the media", he said.
  • (2) Families of China's 'disappeared' say country is a place of fear and panic Read more “It is so obsequious, it is just nauseating,” said Howie.
  • (3) This week I saw a hilarious clip of Trump beckoning Farage out of a crowd – a bit like Courteney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video – and Farage telling him obsequiously he was “handing over the mantle”.
  • (4) In a piece for Salon , Greenwald said the blog’s favorable – “obsequious” was the word he used – coverage of justices was a way for Goldstein to curry favor for when he would argue before the court.
  • (5) They're still queuing up to take a bow, albeit less obsequiously than before.
  • (6) After King Phil repaid Labour for its obsequiousness by publicly backing the Tories in 2010, the new PM asked him to review government spending and procurement.
  • (7) Not for him the tiny calibrations of the text or the obsequious notes to his masters.
  • (8) There are people who have been absolute shits for the last 20 years who have suddenly become embarrassingly friendly and obsequious.
  • (9) And in the middle of it were the two Matthews, obsequiously yucking it up like a grotesque Fluck and Law parody of the coddled one-percent.
  • (10) The minister’s article reads like an obsequious sales pitch, but in that sense it is fairly consistent with the UK government’s approach to the Gulf states.
  • (11) Observing this process through the prism of private equity, there is a certain obsequiousness on behalf of politicians behind closed doors.
  • (12) First, nobly casting aside obsequious talk of titles following his recent appointment as president of the Queen's Bench Division, Leveson willingly confirmed that he was his old self: "I was always Brian Leveson."
  • (13) For a decade Britain has been obsequious towards China .
  • (14) Thus the same administration that resisted judicial disclosure pursuant to transparency laws leaked bits and pieces about the mission (always favorable to the president) to their favorite media message-carriers ; secretly met with and shoveled information to big Hollywood filmmakers planning a pre-election release of a film about the Bin Laden raid (now pushed back until December in the wake of the ensuing controversy, though the already-released film trailer – see below – will soon be inundating the nation); and then sat down with one of America's most obsequious, military-revering news anchors for an hour-long prime-time special that spoke of the raid with predictable awe but asked none of the hard questions about these lingering issues.
  • (15) Obsequiousness tends not to make good pictures of politicians – unless you happen to be Thomas Gainsborough or George Romney – and in a sense photographers are that unusual thing for them, a person just getting on with doing their job just as they might with anybody else.
  • (16) The all-too-familiar axis that has enabled massive civil liberties assaults by the Obama administration - blindly partisan progressive media outlets and particularly obsequious self-styled neutral journalists - instantly sprung into action here and wasted no time jumping to the defense of the US government.
  • (17) Most people, let alone journalists, would be far too embarrassed to admit they harbor such subservient, obsequious sentiments.
  • (18) That same article quoted the supremely obsequious former Obama adviser Harold Koh as hailing torture advocate and serial deceiver John Brennan as "a person of genuine moral rectitude" who ensures that the "kill list" is accompanied by moral struggle: "It's as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war," Koh said.
  • (19) Here's the White House list of who's meeting with the president: • Ajay Banga, MasterCard • Steve Bennett, Symantec • Wes Bush, Northrop Grumman • Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin • Renee James, Intel • Brian Moynihan, Bank of America • Joe Rigby, Pepco Holdings • Charlie Scharf, Visa 3.31pm GMT With exceptions , congressional interrogation of intelligence officials in hearings since the Snowden revelations in June has been obsequious conspiratorial deeply collegial .
  • (20) Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and a soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter.

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.