pickthank

English

Noun

pickthank (plural pickthanks)

1. A sycophant; one who meddles, tattles, informs (often in order to curry favour).
   • 1594, Tho[mas] Nashe, “The Vnfortunate Traueller”, in The Vnfortunate Traueller. Or, The Life of Iacke Wilton, London: […] T. Scarlet for C[uthbert] Burby, […], →OCLC:

     [T]he Dogge nuſling his noſe vnder the necke of the Deare, the Wolfe glad to let the Lambe lye vpon hym to kepe him warme, the Lyon ſuffering the Aſſe to caſt hys legge ouer him: preferring one honeſt vnmannerly friende, before a number of croutching picke-thankes.

   • 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, [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,^[1]

     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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     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.

Translations

sycophant

• Bulgarian: подлизурко (bg) n (podlizurko)
• German: Jasager (de) m

Adjective

pickthank (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to pickthanks.
   • 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday‎^[4], 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, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 107:

     Nevertheless, behind these pick-thank airs Mr. Bandparts was a mellowed man.

Alternative forms

• pick-thank