- parasite
- parasite, sycophant, favorite, toady, lickspittle, bootlicker, hanger-on, leech, sponge, sponger all signify a person who is supported or sustained or seeks support or sustenance, usually physical but sometimes social or intellectual, from another without right or justification.Parasite applies primarily to a person who as a matter of policy is supported more or less by another and gives nothing in return, but it is often extended to anyone who clings to a person of wealth, power, or influence in order to derive personal advantage or who is useless and unnecessary to society{
the ones who evade the earth and live upon the others in some way they have devised. They are the parasites, and they are the despised— Buck
}{a court society ridden with parasites
}{as our present society disintegrates, this démodé figure will become clearer; the Bohemian, the outsider, the parasite, the rat—one of those figures which have at present no function either in a warring or peaceful world— Forster
}{the poorer citizens were little more than parasites, fed with free state bread, amused by free state shows— Buchan
}Sycophant applies to one who clings to a person of wealth, power, or influence and wins or tries to win his favor by fawning, flattery, or adulation{a man who rose in this world because he curried favor, a sycophant— Kenneth Roberts
}{sycophants who kept him from wholesome contact with reality, who played upon his overweening conceit and confirmed him in his persecutional manias— Overstreet
}Favorite applies to a close associate or intimate of a king or noble who is unduly favored by him, especially with power; it may suggest parasitism or sycophancy on the part of the one favored and often connotes the exerting of undue or improper influence{huge grants of land to court favorites— W. C. Ford
}{reduced to the ranks every officer who had a good record and appointed scoundrelly favorites of his own in their places— Graves
}{Pharaoh, his family and his favorites—J. E. M. White
}Toady, often interchangeable with sycophant, stresses more the servility and snobbery of the social climber{he preens himself in the velvet coat, he spies out the land and sees that the Dowager is "the one"; he becomes the perfect toady— Stevie Smith
}{this induced a sharp distaste for the flagrant political plunder, the obscene scramble for the loaves and fishes by the spoilsmen and their toadies— Sidney Warren
}Lickspittle and bootlicker are interchangeable in common speech with sycophant and toady, implying, however, even stronger contemptibleness Characterized those who disagreed as lickspittles and toadies of official whiggery— Asahel Bush){a'lickspittle humility that went beyond flattery— Moorehead
}{its principal characters were stupid and bemused commanders, or vicious bootlickers tainted with homosexuality— Sutton
}Hanger-on applies to someone who is regarded, usually contemptuously, as adhering to or depending unduly on another especially for favors{there were the hangers-on who might be called domestics by inheritance— Ybarra
}{a hanger-on at Court, waiting for the preferment that somehow eluded him— Times Lit. Sup.
}{those rather hangers-on than friends, whom he treated with the cynical contempt that they deserved— Graves
}Leech stresses the persistence of clinging to or bleeding another for one's own advantage{hatred for the freeloader or deadbeat. Yet, as a student of humanity, he tolerated these leeches— Maule & Cane
}{leeches . . . hateful parasites feeding upon the blood of artists!— Robertson Davies
}Sponge and sponger stress a parasitic laziness, dependence, and indifference to the discomforts caused and usually a certain pettiness and constant regard for opportunities to cadge{all social sponges; all satellites of the court; all beggars of the marketplace— Drummond
}{a girl whose disappointment with the world has made her the prey of an unsuccessful crook and sponger—Times Lit. Sup.
}Analogous words: fawner, cringer, truckler (see corresponding verbs at FAWN)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
