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Word of the Day Archive
Monday March 27, 2000

sycophant \SIK-uh-fuhnt\, noun:
A person who seeks favor by flattering people of wealth or influence; a parasite; a toady.

The praise Oxford received as a poet may simply have issued from the mouths of sycophants hungry for patronage.
-- Howard Chua-Eoan and Helen Gibson, "The Bard's Beard?", Time, February 15, 1999

Friendship with the son and daughter-in-law of an imprisoned Supreme Court justice afforded me a special pipeline into high-level Ghanaian gossip about the alarming psychological condition of the head of state, said alternately to be suffering from delusions of grandeur fed by sycophants or to be reduced to quivering agoraphobia after the attempts on his life.
-- David Levering Lewis, "Ghana, 1963", The American Scholar, Winter 1999

Sycophant derives from Greek sukophantes, "an accuser (especially a false accuser) or rogue," from sukon, "fig" + phantes, "one who shows," from phainein, "to show."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for sycophant

 

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