These words are applied to persons guilty of behaviour characterized by excessive deference, flattery, imitation or obedience. Obsequious share with abject an awareness of low station or a felling of low self-esteem which reveals itself in fawning behaviour. Obsequious strongly suggests an attitude that is consciously assumed in order to placate a superior in hopes of getting what one wants or to escape unpleasant consequences: serfs who bowed with obsequious politeness to members of the gentry; a failing student who was maddeningly obsequious to his teacher. Abject conveys the sense of being cast down in spirits or a loss of self-respect that results in a humiliated cringing or pitiable fawning on others: to make an abject apology even though one was not at fault; a beggar so abject that he plucks at the sleeves of passers-by. In related sense, abject designates something unusually degraded or wretched: the abject poverty of millions of people in the world.

Sycophantic is sometimes used interchangeably with obsequious , but is more strongly pejorative. The word suggests a parasitical and self-seeking relationship to someone in a superior position, rather than an attitude of sincere respect: a dictator’s sycophantic yes men; the sycophantic women who surround a successful actor.

Menial , servile and slavish are applied to extremely abject persons or behaviour. In former times, when class distinctions were more pronounced and rigid, these words were as a matter of course applied to those at the bottom of the scale: a menial servant; a servile jester; a slavish retainer. Nowadays these words are more likely to be applied to action or attitudes: his menial unobtrusiveness; servile obedience; slavish attention to the needs of another.

Subservient is a somewhat weaker synonym for the other terms in suggesting truckling or servility. It is more often used to refer to a person who properly serves as a subordinate, or, more commonly, to a thing that has been adapted to further some end or purpose as an auxiliary.