Fawn vs Sycophant - What's the difference?
fawn | sycophant |
A young deer.
A pale brown colour tinted with yellow, like that of a fawn.
(obsolete) The young of an animal; a whelp.
* Holland
Of the fawn colour.
To exhibit affection or attempt to please.
To seek favour by flattery and obsequious behaviour (with on'' or ''upon ).
* Shakespeare
* Milton
* Macaulay
*
, title=The Mirror and the Lamp
, chapter=2 (of a dog) To wag its tail, to show devotion.
----
One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
* Dryden
One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
(obsolete) An informer; a talebearer.
* Sir Philip Sidney
To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
* Milton
To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.
In obsolete terms the difference between fawn and sycophant
is that fawn is the young of an animal; a whelp while sycophant is an informer; a talebearer.As nouns the difference between fawn and sycophant
is that fawn is a young deer while sycophant is one who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.As verbs the difference between fawn and sycophant
is that fawn is to give birth to a fawn while sycophant is to inform against; hence, to calumniate.As an adjective fawn
is of the fawn colour.fawn
English
(wikipedia fawn)Etymology 1
From (etyl) faon.Noun
(en noun)- [The tigress] after her fawns .
Adjective
(-)Derived terms
* fawn lilyEtymology 2
From (etyl) fawnen, from (etyl) fahnian, fagnian, . See also fain.Verb
(en verb)- You showed your teeth like apes, and fawned like hounds.
- Thou with trembling fear, / Or like a fawning parasite, obeyest.
- courtiers who fawn on a master while they betray him
citation, passage=That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.}}
Synonyms
* (seek favour by flattery) grovel, wheedleDerived terms
* fawn overSee also
*References
sycophant
English
Noun
(en noun)- A sycophant will everything admire: / Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire.
- Accusing sycophants , of all men, did best sort to his nature.
Synonyms
* (one who uses compliments to gain favor) ass-kisser, brown noser, suck up, yes man * (one who seeks to gain through the powerful) parasite, flunky, lackey * See alsoQuotations
{{timeline, 1700s=1775 1787, 1800s=1841 1863, 1900s=1927}} * 1775 — , No. 3 *: This language, “the imperial crown of Great Britain,” is not the style of the common law, but of court sycophants . * 1787 — *: They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants , by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. * 1841 — , Ch. 43 *: this man, who has crawled and crept through life, wounding the hands he licked, and biting those he fawned upon: this sycophant , who never knew what honour, truth, or courage meant... * 1863 — , Book IX Ch. XI *: It is only because military men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. * 1927–29' — *: Princes were always at the mercy of others and ready to lend their ears to sycophants .Derived terms
(terms derived from sycophant) * sycophancy * sycophantic * sycophantish * sycophantismVerb
(en verb)- Sycophanting and misnaming the work of his adversary.
