Not too many phants in the English-speaking world.

There's today's word, sycophants, and those extremely large gray beasties, elephants, of Africa, Asia, and zoos and circuses around the world.

Then there are the little used oliphants. These are hunter's horns made from elephant tusks. These should not be confused with those large beasties of Lord of the Rings called oliphaunts. Though, considering the similarity of spelling, Tolkien was definitely having a little fun with his audience.

Of course, we shouldn't disregard sycophant's little used, but genuinely fun for some homophone psychophants.

Oh, one more, oliphants shouldn't be confused with their capitalized homophone Olifants, which is a 563 kilometer long river in the Republic of South Africa and Mozambique that flows into the Limpopo River.

Dug-out Doug McArthur was known for surrounding himself with sycophants who told him what he wanted to hear. That really bit him hard on the ass many times against the Japanese, but he didn't learn from the experience. It really bit him hardest in Korea when Red China ordered millions of "volunteers" into North Korea to bail out their sock-puppet Great Leader. Dug-out Doug wanted to nuke them and invade China, but thankfully, Truman wasn't a lunatic and fired the actual lunatic.

Now there's one "Old Soldier" many veterans were delighted to see fade away.

7 hours ago, CarlHoliday said:

Then there are the little used oliphants. These are hunter's horns made from elephant tusks. These should not be confused with those large beasties of Lord of the Rings called oliphaunts. Though, considering the similarity of spelling, Tolkien was definitely having a little fun with his audience.

Of course, we shouldn't disregard sycophant's little used, but genuinely fun for some homophone psychophants.

Oh, one more, oliphants shouldn't be confused with their capitalized homophone Olifants, which is a 563 kilometer long river in the Republic of South Africa and Mozambique that flows into the Limpopo River.

And not to be confused with the world renowned Australian scientist Sir Mark Oliphant. He was one of the world's early nuclear scientists and was a leader in the development of radar. He also made a significant contribution to the Manhattan Project.