Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Haskell was sycophantically respectful toward parents to their faces but always plotted and schemed when their backs were turned.

From Washington Post • Feb. 6, 2019

If the game was chess, the officers had to stand throughout, and Napoleon almost invariably lost unless the other player sycophantically threw the game.

From Time Magazine Archive

Deng himself sycophantically proclaimed high expectations for grain harvests: "We can all have as much as we want."

From Time Magazine Archive

In this first party congress since the death of Stalin, the men who sycophantically sang Stalin's praise alive now scorned him dead.

From Time Magazine Archive

Crabbe and Goyle guffawed sycophantically, but Malfoy had to stop there, because Hagrid emerged from the back of his cabin balancing a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt.

From "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire" by J. K. Rowling