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sycophant was our Word of the Day on 08/27/2015. Hear the podcast!
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Examples of sycophant in a Sentence
His press conference on January 11 was all aimed toward a single moment. The President was at his rostrum at the Élysée, with a crowd of courtiers, journalists, and sycophants herded behind a velvet rope. One reporter was allowed across the rope to put the same question, in exactly the same words, as he had put when Chirac had been nearing the end of his first term: Would he perhaps consider standing for a further five years? —Julian Barnes, New York Review, 29 Mar. 2007
And swirling all around were coteries of agents, managers, execs, and moneymen; publicists and journalists, gawkers and sycophants. —Daniel Fierman et al., Entertainment Weekly, 9 June 2006
Where his father liked to have sycophants, he likes to be with intellectuals. He likes confrontation. —Franklin Foer, New Republic, 14 Jan. 2002
when her career was riding high, the self-deluded actress often mistook sycophants for true friends
Recent Examples of sycophant from the Web
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In a muscular essay in LitHub, Rebecca Solnit pares away the trappings of power to poke at the needy, grasping, isolated core of Donald Trump, who can’t be satisfied with all the money or sycophants in the world.
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The Warriors were up, three games to one, and planning celebratory excursions to Napa and noodling with the latest toys coughed up by Silicon Valley sycophants.
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FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL ME Mark Zuckerberg has yet to fully acknowledge Facebook’s role in bringing Donald Trump and his merry band of sycophants and supremacists to the White House.
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Hollywood is turning from a batch of soulless, bloodsucking sycophants into a pack of mindless, shambling corpses looking to destroy your brain.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sycophant'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
In ancient Greece, sykophantēs meant "slanderer." It derives from two other Greek words, sykon (meaning "fig") and phainein (meaning "to show or reveal"). How did fig revealers become slanderers? One theory has to do with the taxes Greek farmers were required to pay on the figs they brought to market. Apparently, the farmers would sometimes try to avoid making the payments, but squealers—fig revealers—would fink on them, and they would be forced to pay. Another possible source is a sense of the word fig meaning "a gesture or sign of contempt" (as thrusting a thumb between two fingers). In any case, Latin retained the "slanderer" sense when it borrowed a version of sykophantēs, but by the time English speakers in the 16th century borrowed it as sycophant, the squealers had become flatterers.
Origin and Etymology of sycophant
Latin sycophanta slanderer, swindler, from Greek sykophantēs slanderer, from sykon fig + phainein to show — more at fancy
First Known Use: 1575
Synonym Discussion of sycophant
SYCOPHANT Defined for English Language Learners
sycophant
playDefinition of sycophant for English Language Learners
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: a person who praises powerful people in order to get their approval
Learn More about sycophant
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See words that rhyme with sycophant Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for sycophant Spanish Central: Translation of sycophant Nglish: Translation of sycophant for Spanish speakers
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