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Pronunciation varies by accent · noun
(sometimes attributive) A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour)..
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.
1868, F. H. Doyle, Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford, London: Macmillan, Lecture 2, pp. 49-50, Some pickthank contrived to let the little great man know what had taken place, and he, so she informed me, was ungenerous enough to wreak a mean revenge.
[T]he Dogge nuſling his noſe vnder the necke of the Deare, the Wolfe glad to let the Lambe lye vpon hym to kéepe him warme, the Lyon ſuffering the Aſſe to caſt hys legge ouer him: preferring one honeſt vnmannerly friende, before a number of croutching picke-thankes.
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 […]
Yet such extenuation let me beg, / As, in reproof of many tales devised, / which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear, / By smiling pick-thanks and base news-mongers, / I may, for some things true, wherein my youth / Hath faulty wander’d and irregular, / Find pardon on my true submission.
Nevertheless, behind these pick-thank airs Mr. Bandparts was a mellowed man.
Use pickthank when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Pickthank means (sometimes attributive) A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour)..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
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.
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