I do not want you to lead a life of sycophancy as you did during the foreign rule.

admiration. Admiration is genuine regard earned by real merit; it carries no suggestion of servility or of praise given to buy favour.

love. Love names affection between people and has nothing to do with the calculated praise of the powerful.

appreciation. Appreciation is sincere recognition of someone's worth or work, which is the honest counterpart of flattery rather than a synonym for it.

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NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 1 of 150

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I do not want you to lead a life of <u>sycophancy</u> as you did during the foreign rule.

Q: What is the answer to NDA (I) 2018 GAT Q1?

D. Correct: D, 'flattery'. Sycophancy is servile, self-seeking praise offered to someone in power in the hope of favour, and the plain English word for such insincere praise is flattery. The sentence points the same way: a life lived that way 'during the foreign rule' describes people who fawned on their rulers.

(a)admiration
(b)love
(c)appreciation
(d)flattery

Answer

Why

Correct: D, 'flattery'. Sycophancy is servile, self-seeking praise offered to someone in power in the hope of favour, and the plain English word for such insincere praise is flattery. The sentence points the same way: a life lived that way 'during the foreign rule' describes people who fawned on their rulers.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
admiration: Admiration is genuine regard earned by real merit; it carries no suggestion of servility or of praise given to buy favour.
(b)
love: Love names affection between people and has nothing to do with the calculated praise of the powerful.
(c)
appreciation: Appreciation is sincere recognition of someone's worth or work, which is the honest counterpart of flattery rather than a synonym for it.

Concept

Sycophancy is fawning, self-interested flattery of someone powerful; a person who behaves that way is a sycophant, also called a toady or a yes-man.

Three of the four options are words of sincere approval and only one carries a note of insincerity, so the item turns on whether you can hear the disapproval built into 'sycophancy'. Words like this carry an attitude as well as a meaning, and NDA vocabulary blocks lean on that difference: admiration, appreciation and praise approve, while flattery, adulation and fawning do not.

Key facts

'Sycophant' reached English from Greek sykophantes, which first named an informer rather than a flatterer.
A sycophant is also called a toady, a bootlicker or a yes-man.
Flattery is praise that is excessive or insincere, which is why 'flattering' can mean showing someone as better than they are.

Study next

Words that carry approval or disapproval built into themVocabulary of praise: adulation, eulogy, compliment, tributeVocabulary of servility: obsequious, servile, fawning, ingratiatingGreek and Latin roots behind modern English words

Common traps

Choosing a positive word such as admiration because the sentence does not obviously sound negative.
Reading 'flattery' as harmless politeness when it names insincere praise.

Asked as a synonym item: choose the word closest in meaning to the underlined word.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice, not a real PYQ
Choose the word closest in meaning to 'obsequious' in 'He was obsequious towards his superiors.'
- (a)proud
- (b)servile
- (c)honest
- (d)cheerful
Answer(b) servile: obsequious means excessively eager to please a powerful person.
practice, not a real PYQ
A person who constantly praises the powerful in order to win favour is best described as a
- (a)sycophant
- (b)sceptic
- (c)spectator
- (d)sympathiser
Answer(a) sycophant: the word names exactly that habit of self-seeking flattery.

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