Definition of "sycophant"

sycophant

/ˈsɪkəfænt/

noun
plural sycophants
1. One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
  Quotations
  A sycophant will everything admire: / Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire
  1683, John Dryden, The Art of Poetry
  VVhile a mean Crovvd of Sycophants attend, / And favvn and flatter, creep and cringe and bend; / The Fav'rite bleſſes his ſuperior State, / Riſes o'er all, and hails Himſelf the Great.
  1743, Henry Fielding, “Of True Greatness. An Epistle to George Dodington, Esq”, in Miscellanies, […], volume I, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, […], page 3
2. One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
3. (obsolete) An informer; a talebearer.
  Quotations
  [H]is mind had no eye to espy goodness; and therefore accusing sycophants, of all men, did best sort to his nature.
  a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the page number)”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912,
verb
third-person singular simple present sycophants, present participle sycophanting, simple past and past participle sycophanted
1. (transitive, obsolete) To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
  Quotations
  As therefore he began in the title, so in the next leaf he makes it his first business to tamper with his reader by sycophanting and misnaming the work of his adversary.
  1642, John Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus
2. (transitive, rare) To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.

Definition of "sycophant"

sycophant

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations