sycophantic

«sycophantic» in Mova's school dictionary: praising and agreeing with a powerful or important person… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

adjective; noun sycophant (a sycophant, sycophants); noun sycophancy

meaning for a pupil

Sycophantic means praising and agreeing with a powerful or important person too much, in a fake way, to get something from them. tree →

sense in the lessons

In stories, a sycophantic courtier flatters the king; this tells the reader the character is not honest. In school life, the informal words are "teacher's pet", "suck-up" (US), "crawler" (UK, Australia) or "brown-noser" (rude). In honesty lessons, sycophancy is a kind of dishonesty: real kindness tells the truth politely.

examples

• The sycophantic servants told the king every idea he had was brilliant. tree →
• His sycophantic praise of the boss made everyone cringe. tree →
• Don't be sycophantic; give your honest opinion. tree →
• In the fable, the fox's sycophantic words tricked the crow into dropping the cheese. tree →
• The emperor's sycophantic advisers praised his invisible clothes. tree →
• A good friend tells you the truth, not sycophantic flattery. tree →
• The film's villain was surrounded by sycophantic followers. tree →

note

Say "sik-oh-FAN-tik". Formal word. Person: a sycophant. Being polite or thanking someone is not sycophantic; it is sycophantic when the praise is fake and meant to gain favour.

In the corpora

• A long word for a yes-man is "sycophantic".
• Being too keen to agree and praise is called being "sycophantic".

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «sycophantic» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.