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

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 — 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.

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.

• '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.

• 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.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• 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.