How to Use sycophant in a Sentence

sycophant

noun
  • But the unions and their school board sycophants won’t allow it.
    — Larry Sand, Orange County Register, 26 Mar. 2017
  • Will any other sycophants in his cult get the message?
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Heslov said that Clooney has made sure to keep his old friends close, so he isn’t surrounded by sycophants.
    — Thea Traff, New York Times, 20 Feb. 2025
  • But for those who became sycophants to a racist golfer for personal gain, there can be no going back.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 22 July 2019
  • There are still sycophants and acolytes, but no savvy producers to make his head-scratching moves appear to make sense.
    — Laura Bassett, Rolling Stone, 14 Apr. 2025
  • Who wants to stand with him, other than the sycophants in his Cabinet and party?
    — Thomas L. Friedman, Mercury News, 15 May 2026
  • Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are some of the cleverest sycophants around.
    — Sahil Handa, National Review, 11 July 2019
  • Meanwhile, at the party, Logan gets fed up with the parade of sycophants.
    — Brandon Taylor, The New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2023
  • Those vibes were often dictated by the sycophants in Musk’s orbit.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2025
  • You're not supposed to be sycophants, you're supposed to be skeptics, you're supposed to ask me tough questions.
    — Chris Cillizza, CNN, 5 Oct. 2017
  • These sycophants, along with the anti-Maduro chavistas, are now worried.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 10 Feb. 2019
  • But the whole point of being Dickie was to be surrounded by love, respect, and sycophants.
    — Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 4 Apr. 2024
  • Being surrounded by a group of sycophants can inflate risk-taking and harm judgment.
    — Nuala Walsh, Forbes, 18 Sep. 2024
  • This attitude may stem from years spent arguing on message boards filled with sycophants, haters, and few in between.
    — Adam Wilson, Harper's magazine, 16 Sep. 2019
  • In an undersized team that already shares a worldview, the silicon sycophant doesn't catch the blind spot.
    — Matt Poepsel, Forbes.com, 25 June 2026
  • And yet neither Congress nor the sycophants in the White House seem willing to stop him.
    — Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Apart from Musk’s most loyal sycophants, the build was almost universally ridiculed as the work of a complete novice.
    — Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 13 Jan. 2025
  • Laws mean nothing to Trump or his administration of sycophants.
    — Chicago Tribune, 6 Jan. 2026
  • The Republican sycophants currently in office, out of fear, won’t stand up to him.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 24 Feb. 2026
  • To start the new Mideast war, Donnie acted on his own with no resistance from his sycophants, who have no backbones.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 3 Mar. 2026
  • Natalie tells Love that Sherry runs this town, so the only way to deal with her is to earn her respect or be a sycophant.
    — Jessica Goldstein, Vulture, 15 Oct. 2021
  • Robots are menial servants and sycophants rather than colleagues, and human slavery persists.
    — Manu Saadia, The New Yorker, 13 Jan. 2017
  • Trump’s worried sycophants probably know that the details of an eventual agreement likely do not matter very much at this point.
    — Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 25 May 2026
  • Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, under white powder and red eye shadow like Joker sycophants.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 22 Nov. 2024
  • Mostly, Getty surrounds himself with hangers-on and sycophants, prodding what amounts to his royal court to debate who loves him the most.
    — Brian Lowry, CNN, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Replaced by sycophants and suffocated by the clergy’s interference in daily life, this class has long since lost faith in the system.
    — Karim Sadjadpour, The Atlantic, 10 Jan. 2026
  • Eager sycophants run behind him to carry out his directives and repeat his absurdities.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 15 Feb. 2026
  • This willingness of the AI to heap praise and act as a sycophant has worrying consequences for the populace as a whole.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
  • Samantha barfs up some black bile, and Zoe’s sycophants eat her skin at a dinner party in a bit that briefly frames her as a Christ figure but doesn’t go anywhere.
    — Katie Rife, IndieWire, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Of course, Veep’s sycophants, buffoons, and backstabbers bear little resemblance to the vanguard of our latest regime.
    — Judy Berman, TIME, 20 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sycophant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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