lackey

“Flummoxed by the lack of resources”—in other words, aware that a penniless Uganda needed to reform or collapse—he “comfortably settled” into the role of Western lackey.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025

“Tell the brother he can stay, but he’s working for us,” Boy Kavalier tells a lackey, characterizing that instruction as “just a reminder that it’s my world. He just lives in it.”

From Salon ● Aug. 31, 2025

At the time, nearly a third of the country’s 68 billion euros in deposits — more than triple the entire economy — was held by Russians, feeding the perception that Cyprus was Moscow’s financial lackey.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 20, 2023

Caliban, Prospero’s malformed lackey, has been reclaimed by postcolonial critics as an example of an oppressed “other,” an enslaved man whose dignity has been denied by European imperialists.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 28, 2023

Favored lackey one day, persona non grata the next.

From "Among the Hidden" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

“All of his lackeys are lining up to try to make everybody else’s life miserable to make their boss feel good.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025

Julius is a child of the aristocracy who prefers the company of servants, lackeys and the working-class members of his neighborhood in Miraflores.

From New York Times ● Nov. 1, 2023

Australia's spy chief last week hit out in his annual security threat assessment at former military pilots who turn to working for authoritarian regimes, describing them as "lackeys, more 'top tools' than 'top guns'".

From Reuters ● Mar. 1, 2023

And it's true that he will allow lackeys to experience power, so long as they stay loyal to him.

From Salon ● Jan. 13, 2022

“So we have to correct the weak little lackeys who think it’s fun to follow a bad example. Isn’t that so?”

From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

Inanity dogs the footsteps of the classic tradition, which is everywhere lackeyed, through a long decline, by the pallor of reflected glories. 

From Style by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

It was nightmare, bereft of its pillows, grown somnambulistic; and London became the antechamber to Hades, lackeyed by idle dreams and peopled by mistakes.

From The Voice in the Fog by Harold MacGrath

Too confused to say a word, she lackeyed me into my coat and then ran upstairs.

From The Yeoman Adventurer by George W. Gough

His mind was lackeying Persis, who knew so many people and was having so good a time.

From What Will People Say? A novel by Rupert Hughes

This common body, Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion.

From Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

Lo! this loud, lackeying praise Will stay behind to greet the usurping moon, When they have cloud-barred over thee the West.

From New Poems by Francis Thompson

To him, too, the multitude—   …This common body,   Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,   Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide   To rot itself with motion.

From Shakspere and Montaigne by Jacob Feis

This common body Like to a vagabond Flag upon the stream Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion.

From The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe