Sycophancy

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The fawning behavior of a sycophant; servile flattery; fawningness. countable, uncountable

    "I have always been taken aback at the high number of people in whom an astonishingly high income led to additional sycophancy as they became more dependent on their clients and employers and more addicted to making even more money."

  2. 2
    fawning obsequiousness wordnet
  3. 3
    The tendency of a language model to produce answers that flatter or agree with a user’s beliefs or biases rather than giving accurate or truthful information, or to give strategically false answers when it infers that it is being evaluated in terms of alignment. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
adulationapple polishingapple-polishingass-kissingback scratchingbackbiting

Example

More examples

"So much sycophancy was lavished on him that he ended up getting drunk."

Etymology

From Latin sȳcophantia, from Ancient Greek σῡκοφᾰντῐ́ᾱ (sūkophăntĭ́ā), equivalent to sycophant + -cy.

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