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If you abase yourself, people respect you less because you act in a way that is beneath you; due to this behavior, you are lowered or reduced in rank, esteem, or reputation.
The word abject emphasizes a very bad situation or quality, thereby making it even worse.
An acolyte is someone who serves a leader as a devoted assistant or believes in the leader’s ideas.
If you acquiesce to something, you allow it to happen by doing what someone wants without putting up a struggle or voicing your own concerns.
An adherent is a supporter or follower of a leader or a cause.
Adulation is praise and admiration for someone that includes more than they deserve, usually for the purposes of flattery.
An autonomous person makes their own decisions without being influenced by anyone else; an autonomous country or organization is independent and has the power to govern itself.
Blandishments are words or actions that are pleasant and complimentary, intended to persuade someone to do something via a use of flattery.
Someone who has a bristling personality is easily offended, annoyed, or angered.
Someone who is contumacious is purposely stubborn, contrary, or disobedient.
If you behave with deference towards someone, you show them respect and accept their opinions or decisions, especially because they have an important position.
A dissident is someone who disagrees publicly with a government, especially in a country where this is not allowed.
Something that is divisive is likely to cause arguments between people.
An entourage is a group of assistants, servants, and other people who tag along with an important person.
To fawn over someone is to be extremely nice to them in an insincere way because you want them to like you or give you something.
If someone is fractious, they are easily upset or annoyed over unimportant things.
If someone is implacable, they very stubbornly react to situations or the opinions of others because of strong feelings that make them unwilling to change their mind.
Someone who is incorrigible has bad habits or does bad things and is unlikely to ever change; this word is often used in a humorous way.
An irascible person becomes angry very easily.
A lackey is a person who follows their superior’s orders so completely that they never openly question those commands.
A laudatory article or speech expresses praise or admiration for someone or something.
A minion is an unimportant person who merely obeys the orders of someone else; they usually perform boring tasks that require little skill.
If someone is being obsequious, they are trying so hard to please someone that they lack sincerity in their actions towards that person.
Someone who is obstreperous is noisy, unruly, and difficult to control.
A recalcitrant animal or person is difficult to control and refuses to obey orders—even after stiff punishment.
Refractory people deliberately don’t obey someone in authority and so are difficult to deal with or control.
A restive person is not willing or able to keep still or be patient because they are bored or dissatisfied with something; consequently, they are becoming difficult to control.
If you say that someone is servile, you don’t respect them because they are too obedient, too agreeable, and too willing to do anything for another person.
Something that is specious seems to be good, sound, or correct but is actually wrong or fake.
If you are subservient, you are too eager and willing to do what other people want and often put your own wishes aside.
If you are supine, you are lying on your back with your face upward.
An unctuous person acts in an overly deceptive manner that is obviously insincere because they want to convince you of something.
In the Middle Ages, a vassal was a worker who served a lord in exchange for land to live upon; today you are a vassal if you serve another and are largely controlled by them.
Noun
sycophant
SIK-uh-fuhnt
Context
The seemingly harmless public official was clearly a self-serving sycophant who flattered superiors to obtain favors from them. This lying sycophant—or person who caters to another—spoke empty praises to anyone who would hear him for the purpose of making those people think well of him so he, in turn, could gain power. This sycophant used such an excessive array of false compliments that he at long last wormed his way into a leadership position.
Quiz:Try again!
What is a sycophant?
Someone who is good at telling others what they want to hear.
Someone who works their way up to a position of power.
Someone who falsely praises those in authority to get something they want.
SycoPant Man "Man, you're a sicko! You ask the boss what pants he wants you to wear? You're such a sicksycophant!"
Examples
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
— Sir Richard Steele, Irish writer and politician
Pop music writing is [seemingly] dominated by three following camps: Writers who construct dense, hyperbolic prose that is ostensibly only written for other music writers, consumer-guide reviewers whose meme is "quantity beats quality," and the sycophant.
—
The Atlantic
Dante’s attitude toward sycophants, as brown-nosers are called, is a sign of the general attitude of the time, Parker said. It wasn’t a good thing to be a suck-up. People believed it had a real effect on the cultural fabric.
—
NPR
[A]s Kyle puts it, “I want to be a partner so I can sleep until 5:00 a.m. every day until I die at fifty. That’s what I want.” Not to mention the pressures of passing the bar, billing a minimum of 2,000 hours a year, and honing much-needed skills as a sycophant.
—
The Christian Science Monitor
A sycophant is a “shower of figs;” one possible explanation of this word is that sycophants would inform authorities about crooks who were illegally exporting “figs” from Athens.
