What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Servility vs Sycophant - What's the difference?

servility | sycophant |

As nouns the difference between servility and sycophant

is that servility is the condition of being servile while 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.

servility

English

Noun

(servilities)
  • The condition of being servile.

    • sycophant

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
  • * Dryden
    • A sycophant will everything admire: / Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire.
  • One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
  • (obsolete) An informer; a talebearer.
  • * Sir Philip Sidney
    • 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 also

    Quotations

    {{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 * sycophantism

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
  • * Milton
    • Sycophanting and misnaming the work of his adversary.
  • To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.