pickthank
English
Noun
pickthank (plural pickthanks)
- A sycophant, a yes-man; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour).
- c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene ii]:
- 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.
- 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.
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Translations
sycophant
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Adjective
pickthank (not comparable)
- Of or relating to pickthanks.
- 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Act I, Scene 1,
- 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 […]
- 1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney: Ure Smith, published 1965, page 107:
- Nevertheless, behind these pick-thank airs Mr. Bandparts was a mellowed man.
- 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Act I, Scene 1,
Alternative forms
- pick-thank