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What is "sycophantic"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sycophantic
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But he is angriest at and reserves his strongest denunciation for the intelligentsia, whom he accuses of sycophantic devotion to Yeltsin.
▪ It's hard to envisage the usual knighthoods for sycophantic tabloid editors, several of whom pointed out his failings.
▪ It has never been the intention of Guitarist to augment dealer ads with sycophantic reviews, either.
▪ Tactics that shunted money into the hands of prime ministers or sycophantic merchants did not generally help the citizens of a nation.
▪ The extremism of the antagonistic, Western, post-Stalinist critic is mirrored in the extremism of the sycophantic Stalinist party apparatchik.
▪ There was his clique of sycophantic friends, many of them middle-aged, who were too fawning and deferential.
▪ You get very fed up with people being sycophantic, toadying to you, as a symptom of success.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sycophantic

Sycophantic \Syc`o*phan"tic\, Sycophantical \Syc`o*phan"tic*al\, a. [Cf. Gr. ? slanderous.] Of or pertaining to a sycophant; characteristic of a sycophant; meanly or obsequiously flattering; courting favor by mean adulation; parasitic.

To be cheated and ruined by a sycophantical parasite.
--South.

Sycophantic servants to the King of Spain.
--De Quincey.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sycophantic

1670s, from Greek sykophantikos, from sykophantes (see sycophant). Related: Sycophantical (1560s).

Wiktionary
sycophantic

a. obsequious, flattering, toadying.

WordNet
sycophantic

adj. attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery [syn: bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish]

Usage examples of "sycophantic".

She at once became gentle, sycophantic, almost caressing in manner, and assured me that the ceremony of taking the vow would be indefinitely postponed, although the Bishop of Lugon had already prepared his homily, and invitations had been issued to the nobility.

This minor talent, or vice, would have made him merely a sycophantic niggler were it not for his humor and charm.

Recorded speeches on television, sycophantic praise in the newspapers, and an overwhelming vote from the electronic polling booths which are rigged to give him ninety percent of the votes no matter how they are cast.