Minion vs Sycophant - What's the difference?
minion | sycophant |
A loyal servant of another, usually a more powerful being.
*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=Kevin Heng
, title= A sycophantic follower.
(obsolete) A loved one; one highly esteemed and favoured.
* Sylvester
* William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens , IV-III
(obsolete) An ancient form of ordnance with a calibre of about three inches.
(typography, uncountable) A size of type smaller than brevier but larger than nonpareil, roughly equivalent to 7pt.
(obsolete) Favoured, beloved; "pet".
*, vol.1, p.148:
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 minion and sycophant
is that minion is favoured, beloved; "pet" while sycophant is an informer; a talebearer.As an adjective minion
is favoured, beloved; "pet".As a verb sycophant is
to inform against; hence, to calumniate.minion
English
(wikipedia minion)Noun
(en noun)Why Does Nature Form Exoplanets Easily?, volume=101, issue=3, page=184, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter.}}
- God's disciple and his dearest minion
- Is this the Athenian minion whom the world / Voiced so regardfully?
- (Beaumont and Fletcher)
- (Burton)
Synonyms
* (loyal servant) disciple, follower, henchman, stooge, toadyAdjective
(en adjective)- These favours, with the commodities that follow minion Courtiers, corrupthis libertie, and dazle his judgement.
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.
