sycophant
/ˈsɪkəfænt/
sycophant noun: one who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
Noun
sycophant (plural sycophants)
- One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
- A sycophant will everything admire: / Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire1683, 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, […], →OCLC, page 3
- Synonyms:
- ass-kisser, brown noser, suck-up, yes man
- One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
- An informer; a talebearer.
- [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 folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London...
Verb
sycophant (third-person singular simple present sycophants, present participle sycophanting, simple past and past participle sycophanted)
- To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
- 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
- To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.
sycophant meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
sycophant in Urdu
- چاپلوس, خوشامدی
sycophant in Bengali
- one who uses compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another person
- খয়ের খাঁ khoẏer khã, চামচা camca
sycophant in Malayalam
- crawler, toady, creep
- സ്തുതിപാഠകൻ, സ്തോതാവ്, അർത്ഥികൻ, വെെതാളികൻ, മുഖസ്തുതിക്കാരൻ, പ്രശംസകൻ
sycophant in Kannada
- ಮುಖಸ್ತುತಿ ಮಾಡುವವನು, ಭಟ್ಟಂಗಿ, ಹೊಗಳುಭಟ್ಟ, ವ್ಯಕ್ತಿಪೂಜಕ, ಪರೋಪಜೀವಿ
More languagesFewer languages
- sycophant in Punjabi
- ਚਮਚਾ camcā
- sycophant in Pashto
- چاپلوس čāplus, چاپلوسه čāplusa
- sycophant in Tagalog
- sipsip
- sycophant in Arabic
- مُتَمَلِّق m مُدَاهِن mutamalliq
- sycophant in Malay
- pengampu
- sycophant in Indonesian
- penjilat
- sycophant in Persian
- چاپلوس čâplus, خایهمال xâye-mâl
- sycophant in Vietnamese
- nịnh hót
Synonyms of sycophant
29 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of sycophant
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sycophants |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | sycophants |
| present participle | sycophanting |
| past participle | sycophanted |
| past | sycophanted |
Origin of sycophant
First attested in 1537. From Latin sȳcophanta (“informer, trickster”), from Ancient Greek συκοφάντης (sukophántēs), itself from σῦκον (sûkon, “fig”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “to show, demonstrate”). The gesture of "showing the fig" was a vulgar one, which was made by sticking the thumb between two fingers, a display which vaguely resembles a fig, which is itself symbolic of a σῦκον (sûkon), which also meant vulva. The story behind this etymology is that politicians in ancient Greece steered clear of displaying that vulgar gesture, but secretly urged their followers to taunt their opponents by using it. Cognate with Italian sicofante, Spanish sicofanta.
Words formed from sycophant
Questions about sycophant
- What does sycophant mean?
- Sycophant means one who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
- What is sycophant in Urdu?
- Sycophant in Urdu is چاپلوس, خوشامدی. See Sycophant meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is sycophant?
- Sycophant can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce sycophant?
- Sycophant is pronounced /ˈsɪkəfænt/.
- What is the plural of sycophant?
- The plural of sycophant is sycophants.
Words near sycophant in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sycophant (page history and authors); sycophant (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sycophant (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); sycophant (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-sycophant-2.ogg.
Cite this entry: “sycophant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sycophant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.