Definition of "courtier" [court•ier]

• An attendant at a sovereign's court. (noun)
• One who seeks favor, especially by insincere flattery or obsequious behavior. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "All my training and thoughts were centred here, not as what one calls a courtier at all, but as one of the household who feared the king and queen no more than"
• "The Persian courtier is constantly on horseback, hunting with his sovereign in weather of all kinds, or accompanying him in journeys from one end of Persia to the other."
• "Now, the old woman sat no more at the door with her distaff -- the lank beggar no longer asked charity in courtier-like phrase; nor on holidays did the peasantry thread with slow grace the mazes of the dance."