(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.
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.