Psychophant: ˈsīkōfənt

Example sentence: "Oh my effing God, Kash Patel is such a fucking 'psychophant.'"

Psychophant: ˈsīkōfənt,ˈsīkōfant

NOUN

• 1. a groveling, obsequious follower who commits irrational acts of devotion.

• 2. a sadistic and devoted underling who acts cruelly against his leader’s opponents; a ruthless and committed henchman.

ETYMOLOGY

Psychophant: a portmanteau that combines psycho from the Greek word psykho, which means mental and is a pejorative for a psychopath, and sycophant, meaning an obsequious and servile flatterer. The term sycophant derives from the French sycophante, which comes via Latin from the Greek sukophantēs ‘informer’, from sukon ‘fig’ + phainein ‘to show.’

As Thomas North writes in his translation of Plutarch’s Lives (1580: p. 101), one of the laws of Solon (630-560 BCE), an Athenian magistrate, was that Greeks could not transport figs out of the country for trade. And those Greeks who tried to ingratiate themselves with Athenian authorities by informing on their neighbors who transported figs were called sukophantēs. Oxford English Dictionary quotes Thomas North’s Plutarch’s Lives in its first defintion for sycophant.

While the term sycophant often connotes an insincere self-seeker who merely flatters or makes ostentatious shows of loyalty to increase his own power (or what I like to call, Ramaswamying), psychophant instead refers to a loyalist so sincerely and insanely devoted, he is even willing to commit acts of evil or self-sacrifice on his ruler’s behalf.

EXAMPLES

Joseph Goebbels was the epitome of a psychophant. He was not just Hitler’s propaganda chief, he would also express his devotion for Hitler in his diary in frighteningly fanatical terms.