noun
Meaning 1
A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: attributive, sometimes
Examples
- 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.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided