Sycophancy is the behaviour of praising powerful people far more than they deserve, because you want something from them. It is the noun for the whole habit or the whole atmosphere, not for the person — the person is a sycophant, and 'sycophantic' is the adjective. The word carries strong disapproval: nobody says it about themselves, and nobody uses it as a compliment. What makes praise into sycophancy is not the praise itself but two things underneath it — the praise is bigger than the truth, and the praiser wants a reward (a promotion, a good grade, a contract, protection). So you can praise your boss honestly and that is fine; you can also praise your boss for a bad idea, agree with everything, laugh at every joke, and that is sycophancy. It is a formal word. In writing you will meet it about politics, big companies, and royal courts: 'a culture of sycophancy', 'the sycophancy of his advisers'. In everyday Taiwanese-English conversation people are much more likely to say 'kissing up', 'sucking up', 'brown-nosing', or call the person a 'yes-man'. Sycophancy also has a quiet cost that students often miss: the powerful person stops hearing the truth, because everyone around them has learned that agreeing is safer. That is why writers use the word about failing companies and failing governments — it describes a system that has gone deaf, not just one rude habit. Recently the word has spread to AI too: people say a chatbot 'shows sycophancy' when it agrees with the user instead of saying what is true.

阿諛奉承、逢迎拍馬（整個行為或風氣）。台灣口語最常說的是「拍馬屁」；只是「拍馬屁」偏日常、偏輕鬆，sycophancy 是書面語、語氣重，帶明確的批評。若指那種上位者身邊全是應聲蟲的風氣，中文常說「一言堂」的氛圍。