Obsequious vs Sycophant - What's the difference?
obsequious | sycophant |
(archaic) Obedient, compliant with someone else's orders or wishes.
Excessively eager and attentive to please or to obey all instructions; fawning, subservient, servile.
* 1927 , (Thornton Wilder), (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) , p. 20
(obsolete) Of or pertaining to obsequies, funereal.
*
*
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 obsequious and sycophant
is that obsequious is of or pertaining to obsequies, funereal while sycophant is an informer; a talebearer.As an adjective obsequious
is obedient, compliant with someone else's orders or wishes.As a noun sycophant is
one who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.As a verb sycophant is
to inform against; hence, to calumniate.obsequious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- Translation falls especially short of this conceit which carries the whole flamboyance of the Spanish language. It was intended as an obsequious flattery of the Condesa, and was untrue.
- … the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow…
- Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
Usage notes
* In modern usage, not to be confused with obsequies as the “funereal” sense has become obsolete.Synonyms
* (fawning or subservient) fawning, ingratiating, servile, slavish, sycophantic, truckling, people pleaser, kiss-asssycophant
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.