Pander vs Sycophant - What's the difference?
pander | sycophant |
A person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male. (Later panderer.)
* 1992 , Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright, translating Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way , Folio Society 2005, p. 190:
An offer of illicit sex with a third party.
An illicit or illegal offer, usually to tempt.
(by extension) One who ministers to the evil designs and passions of another.
* Burke
To offer illicit sex with a third party; to pimp.
To tempt with, to appeal or cater to (improper motivations etc.); to assist in the gratification of.
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.
As nouns the difference between pander and sycophant
is that pander is a person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male. (Later panderer. 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 pander and sycophant
is that pander is to offer illicit sex with a third party; to pimp while sycophant is to inform against; hence, to calumniate.pander
English
Alternative forms
* pandarNoun
(en noun)- It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals and academicians with whom he was most intimately associated that Swann so cynically compelled to serve him as panders .
- Those wicked panders to avarice and ambition.
Verb
(en verb)- His latest speech simply seems to pander to the worst instincts of the electorate.
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.