What does "backslapper" mean?

One who makes a show of liking another person with profuse or excessive displays of camaraderie, such as vigorous hand clasping, back-slapping, hearty words of greeting, etc.

Backslapper

Q: What is a synonym for "backslapper"?

Common synonyms include: sycophant, adulator, apple polisher, apple-polisher, ass-licker, backscratcher.

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
One who makes a show of liking another person with profuse or excessive displays of camaraderie, such as vigorous hand clasping, back-slapping, hearty words of greeting, etc.
"Charming and funny as he was in small groups, he was no glad-hander, backslapper, or baby-kisser."
2
someone who demonstrates enthusiastic or excessive cordiality wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

sycophant adulator apple polisher apple-polisher ass-licker backscratcher

Example

More examples

"Charming and funny as he was in small groups, he was no glad-hander, backslapper, or baby-kisser."

Etymology

From backslap + -er.

Related phrases

make show of

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.