Definition of sycophants:
(n) :
One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favour or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
(n) :
One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential.
(n) :
(obsolete) An informer; a talebearer.
(v) :
(transitive, obsolete) To inform against; hence, to calumniate.
(v) :
(transitive, rare) To play the sycophant toward; to flatter obsequiously.