What's the difference between servant and sycophant?

Servant


Definition:

  • (n.) One who serves, or does services, voluntarily or on compulsion; a person who is employed by another for menial offices, or for other labor, and is subject to his command; a person who labors or exerts himself for the benefit of another, his master or employer; a subordinate helper.
  • (n.) One in a state of subjection or bondage.
  • (n.) A professed lover or suitor; a gallant.
  • (v. t.) To subject.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There was also acknowledgement for two long-term servants to the men’s game who will both leave the Premier League for Major League Soccer this summer.
  • (2) The Dacre review panel, which included Sir Joseph Pilling, a retired senior civil servant, and the historian Prof Sir David Cannadine, said Britain now had one of the "less liberal" regimes in Europe for access to confidential government papers and that reform was needed to restore some trust between politicians and people.
  • (3) I am one of those retired civil servants who has not received my pension.
  • (4) Senior civil servant Simon Case joined the UK’s EU embassy in March to lead work on the new partnership with the bloc, but EU diplomats are unsure how he fits into the picture.
  • (5) The report was addressed personally to Farr and says it is not to be seen by civil servants, only by him, ministers and their special advisers.
  • (6) "Public servants did nothing to cause the slump but are being asked to bear an unfair share of the burden.
  • (7) So sensitive is the case that Hunt, his civil servants and advisers are expected to rebuff any external lobbying – so they can base their judgement only on a analysis of the public interest issues raised by the proposed deal that was completed by media regulator Ofcom today.
  • (8) A series of reports, written by civil servants and approved by ministers, will be published from the spring of next year until 2014 to examine the impact of everything from directives to the European Court of Justice.
  • (9) Here, the balance of power is clear: the master is dominating the servant – and not the other way around, as is the case with Google Now and the poor.
  • (10) Unions warned it could lead to a system where civil servants were loyal to their political masters rather than the taxpayer.
  • (11) Similar measurements were made in subjects with essential hypertension (77 white and 23 black), and 48 healthy normotensive white civil servants.
  • (12) You've just joined Twitter – why would you recommend it to other civil servants?
  • (13) Public servants who loved their useful work find only a few hours waiting on tables.
  • (14) The package included pay rises for civil servants and security personnel.
  • (15) "There are idle MPs with no outside interests and there are fantastic public servants that do have them."
  • (16) Helena writes: Ilias Iliopoulos, a leading figure at ADEDY, Greece's union of civil servants, has just told me: “This is a warning to the government not to pass the measures.Today was a huge success as witnessed by all those in the armed forces and police who also participated because they, too, will be affected by these cuts.
  • (17) Because for more than a year, he had bent the rules, constantly and persistently, in the face of warnings from his most senior civil servants?
  • (18) The public servants’ ethos, their attachment to the civic realm, has been systematically trashed as mere unionised self-interest.
  • (19) It blamed "confrontation maniacs" for "[making their] servants of conservative media let loose a whole string of sophism intended to hatch all sorts of dastardly wicked plots and float misinformation".
  • (20) The current authors explored this issue in a cohort of 18,274 male civil servants, among whom there were 1,282 cancer deaths over 18-20 years of follow-up.

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.