7.You could even just cut to the chase and call the person themselves a placebo, which, according to the OED, meant " a flatterer, a sycophant, [or] a parasite."
8.Virtue likewise can only be acquired by the discharge of relative duties; but the importance of these sacred duties will scarcely be felt by the being who is cajoled out of his humanity by the flattery of sycophants.
9.The glance of a man accustomed to draw enormous interest from his capital acquires, like that of the libertine, the gambler, or the sycophant, certain indefinable habits, —furtive, eager, mysterious movements, which never escape the notice of his co-religionists.