(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.
Unctuous
Definition:
(a.) Of the nature or quality of an unguent or ointment; fatty; oily; greasy.
(a.) Having a smooth, greasy feel, as certain minerals.
(a.) Bland; suave; also, tender; fervid; as, an unctuous speech; sometimes, insincerely suave or fervid.
Example Sentences:
(1) Early opportunities to indulge his skill for making unctuousness compelling came in the roles of a school snitch in the Al Pacino vehicle Scent of a Woman (1992), for which Hoffman auditioned five times.
(2) Trump, when asked last December which president he most admires, did not pay the usual unctuous tribute to Lincoln, Kennedy or Reagan, but said that his role model was James Marshall.
(3) Already irritated with Speaker John Bercow for being long-winded, unctuous and perceptibly anti-Conservative in the House of Commons, the idea that his Labour-supporting wife would go on the programme's Channel 5 reincarnation had been a red rag to the proverbial.
(4) Disease, birth-defects and chronic illnesses are all part and parcel of an unregulated industry that operates outside the range of global media but with the full complicity of the Nigerian government that wants nothing whatsoever to upset its unctuous cash-cow.
(5) That your jaw is wired open, and you're being spoonfed thick, unctuous vomit from a large tureen forged from glimmering, gilded rubbish.
(6) These things are driven by rolling, unctuous television telling people a great event is unfolding, focusing on the few hysterics in tears and not the many who come to feel their pain.
(7) Just as he had (arguably) revolutionised TV satire, making it threatening to, rather than complicit with, the establishment, here he was changing the nature of the TV interview: unctuous deference was out; aggression and scepticism were in.
(8) But there's no doubt who left amid the biggest slurp of unctuous adulation.
(9) Listening to the voluptuous precision with which he articulated his dream of feasting "on the swelling, unctuous paps of a fat, pregnant sow", it was good to be reminded of the matchless clarity of the Richardson voice which remains one of the great treasures of my theatre-going lifetime.
(10) Despite the ongoing threat to national sanity posed by The X Factor, such pop is no longer the embarrassing province of the unctuous boyband, or pitched strictly at the tweenage market.
(11) This dish is the opposite of all those things: sinfully rich, full of butter, served with unctuous roasting juices on top.
(12) So, the trick is either to catch the meat before the muscle cells burst, or leave it in the oven for ages until everything reaches an unctuous softness.
(13) History’s first overtly gay Disney character, it turns out, is LeFou, unctuous manservant to preening, hyper-macho villain Gaston – an underling who, in Condon’s words, “on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston”.
(14) This is said often, even in this unctuous week - and yet still it does not permeate.
(15) Pointlessly suffixed to a retweet to indicate earnest accord, "<THIS" is really nothing but an unctuous tagnut.
(16) The pintxos are chalked up on a board and cooked to order: an unctuous risotto of mushrooms and idiazabal (a Basque cheese), garlic soup with pig's ear, braised veal cheeks in wine or a bacalao (salt cod) taco.
(17) But the haphazard canals criss-crossing it were still full of thick, unctuous water with a rainbow film on top, and white paint on the birch tree trunks could not cover the black trace of oil, Greenpeace says.
(18) We may be sure that the MP for Clacton has never trimmed his views for political advantage; nor has he begun a question with the unctuous phrase “May I congratulate my right honourable friend…” I know from experience that the role of an independent MP comes with its disadvantages.
(19) The always-packed tapas bar Casa Revuelta dishes up the city’s pre-eminent pinchos de bacalao – piping-hot, fist-size nuggets of flaky, unctuous cod (€2.80).
(20) Despite unctuous protests about good taste, there is an audience for this fight, a considerably bigger one than there had been before they came to blows in front of the cameras and some distance from a referee.