Obsequious vs. Sycophant — What's the Difference?
![](webp/obsequious-vs-sycophant-14021.webp)
Difference Between Obsequious and Sycophant
ADVERTISEMENT
Definitions
Obsequious
Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.
Sycophant
A person who attempts to gain advantage by flattering influential people or behaving in a servile manner.
Obsequious
Excessively eager and attentive to please or to obey instructions; fawning, subservient, servile.
Sycophant
One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
Obsequious
(archaic) Obedient; compliant with someone else's orders or wishes.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sycophant
One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
Obsequious
(obsolete) Of or pertaining to obsequies, funereal.
Sycophant
(obsolete) An informer; a talebearer.
Obsequious
Promptly obedient, or submissive, to the will of another; compliant; yielding to the desires of another; devoted.
His servants weeping,Obsequious to his orders, bear him hither.
Sycophant
To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
ADVERTISEMENT
Obsequious
Servilely or meanly attentive; compliant to excess; cringing; fawning; as, obsequious flatterer, parasite.
There lies ever in "obsequious" at the present the sense of an observance which is overdone, of an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another.
Sycophant
To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.
Obsequious
Of or pertaining to obsequies; funereal.
Sycophant
An informer; a talebearer.
Obsequious
Attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery
Sycophant
A base parasite; a mean or servile flatterer; especially, a flatterer of princes and great men.
A sycophant will everything admire:Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire.
Obsequious
Attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner;
Obsequious shop assistants
Sycophant
To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
Sycophanting and misnaming the work of his adversary.
Sycophant
To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.
Sycophant
To play the sycophant.
Sycophant
A person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage