[ad. L. sȳcophantia, a. Gr. σῦκοφαντία, f. σῡκοφάντης SYCOPHANT.] The practice or quality of a sycophant.
1. The trade or occupation of an informer; calumnious accusation, tale-bearing. Now only in Gr. Hist.: see next, 1.
1622. Bp. Hall, Contempl., N. T., III. iv. It was hard to hold that seat [sc. the publican’s] without oppression, without exaction: One that best knew it, branded it with poling, and sycophancy.
1721. Bailey, Sycophancy … false Dealing, false Accusation, Tale-bearing.
1808. Mitford, Hist. Greece, xxi. § 1. III. 18. That evit which, with the name of Sycophancy, so peculiarly infested Athens.
1850. Grote, Greece, II. lxv. (1862), V. 562. Men (says Xenophon) whom every one knew to live by making calumnious accusations (called Sycophancy).
2. Mean or servile flattery; the character of a mean or servile flatterer.
1657. Trapp, Comm. Esther iii. 1. Whether it was also by flattery or sycophancy … that Haman had insinuated himself into the Kings favour.
1742. Richardson, Pamela (1824), I. xcv. 472. The child will reject with sullenness all the little sycophancies that are made to it.
1821. Syd. Smith, Wks. (1867), I. 338. Abject political baseness and sycophancy.
1860. Mill, Repr. Govt. (1865), 67/1. The people, like the despot, is pursued with adulation and sycophancy.
1873. Dixon, Two Queens, IV. XXII. ix. 225. Neither of these critics had the sycophancy to approve his lines.
