Pickthank

Quick meaning: Pickthank is a noun meaning (sometimes attributive) A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour).

Meaning

(sometimes attributive) A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour).

Example Sentences

Nevertheless, behind these pick-thank airs Mr. Bandparts was a mellowed man.

This Dodger is mine uncle’s parasite, The arrant’st varlet that e’er breathed on earth; He sets more discord in a noble house By one day’s broaching of his pickthank tales, Than can be salved again in twenty years […]

1628, John Earle, Micro-cosmographie, or, A Piece of the World Discovered; in Essayes and Characters, Characters, 40. A rash man, He is a man still swayed with the first reports, and no man more in the power of a pickthank then he.

1755, Eliza Haywood (under the pseudonym Exploralibus), The Invisible Spy, London: T. Garner, Volume 1, Chapter 7, p. 256, Why then, sir, your friend is no better than a pickthank for bringing you such idle stories; and I am not afraid to tell him so to his face.

Word Forms

• pickthanks
• pick-thank

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include pleaseman, sycophant, pickeerer, lick-platter, suck, lickpot.

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