Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who fawns; one who cringes and flatters meanly.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who fawns; a sycophant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who fawns; a sycophant.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who humbles himself as a sign of respect; who behaves as if he had no self-respect

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The man's chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors.

    THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 2010

  • "Alex, I've fawned over Palin and Althouse, Sir, is no fawner by comparison."

    A big crowd in Cedarburg, Wisconsin for McCain and Palin today. Ann Althouse 2008

  • Alex, I've fawned over Palin and Althouse, Sir, is no fawner by comparison.

    A big crowd in Cedarburg, Wisconsin for McCain and Palin today. Ann Althouse 2008

  • While poor excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and toad – eater, was at least an honest and a constant one, and had ever borne a faithful friendship towards her impeacher and had been truly absorbed and swallowed up in devotion to the magnificence of Mr

    Dombey and Son 2007

  • There is no such fawner on the aristocracy, if he has but a chance of getting any thing out of them, as a _parvenu_ by birth, a liberal in politics, and an Independent by "_religious persuasion_."

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 Various

  • So we met to do him honor; worshipper and eager fawner begged a tassel of his whiskers, or his autograph in ink; never was there so much sighin 'round a pallid human lion, as he stood his lines explaining, taking out the hitch and kink!

    Rippling Rhymes Walt Mason

  • He pictured him as either a bit of a fawner, who would cringe through the year, or a keen-headed business man, who would go through it with a steel-trap mouth, and an eye to every weakness in his fellow-workers.

    Antony Gray,—Gardener Leslie Moore

  • As such persons were usually cringing and fawning, and looked for a reward, the word came to be used also to denote a fawner or flatterer.

    Barnes New Testament Notes 1949

  • The man's chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors.

    The House of Mapuhi 1911

  • The man's chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors.

    The House of Mapuhi 1909

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