"That humans have long been aware of the corrosive danger from kowtowing, toadying, sucking up, piling it on thick, apple-polishing and otherwise bootlicking..."

"... is shown by the extensive array of synonyms and expressions for sycophancy. Despite humanity’s historic distaste for the phenomenon, autocratic rulers and the vainglorious who aspire to such power remain addicted to it. Donald Trump, with his Cabinet meetings turned into spectacles of public groveling, is just the latest example, if an especially flagrant one. The more cocooned in sycophancy Trump is, it seems, the more vindictive he is toward those not inclined toward Uriah Heepishness, witness the president’s recent effort to bar from the White House those news organizations whose coverage he finds intolerable. Trump can’t resist a temptation known since the fall of man...."

Write Matthew Gwyther — producer of the BBC documentary, "Sucking Up: A Guide to Sycophancy Through the Ages" — in "From the Garden of Eden to the president's Cabinet meetings, apple-polishing has a sorry history" (WaPo).

Yes, I know this is one more example of kicking Trump around over an oft-noted character flaw, but the essay is well-written, it refers not only to Dickens but also to Milton, Shakespeare, and Machiavelli, and I'm interested in this theory that the numerosity of synonyms signifies the importance of the concept.

In that light, here's an excerpt from Geoffrey K. Pullum's 1991 book "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax":

Some time in the future, and it may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have many or dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow. You, gentle reader, must decide here and now whether you are going to let them get away with it, or whether you are going to be true to your position as an Expert On Language by calling them on it.

The last time it happened (other than through the medium of print) was in July 1988 at the University of California's Irvine campus, where I was attending the university's annual Management Institute. Not just one lecturer but two of them somehow (don't ask me how) worked the Eskimological falsehood into their tedious presentations on management psychology and administrative problem-solving. The first time I attempted to demur and was glared at by lecturer and classmates alike; the second time, discretion for once getting the upper hand over valor, I just held my face in my hands for a minute, then quietly closed my binder and crept out of the room.

Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C.W. Schult-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1927) gives just two possible relevant roots: qanik, meaning 'snow in the air', or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on the ground.' Then add that you would be interested to know if the speaker can cite any more.

This will not make you the most popular person in the room. It will have an effect roughly comparable to pouring fifty gallons of thick oatmeal into a harpsichord during a baroque recital. But it will strike a blow for truth, responsibility, and standards of evidence in linguistics.

Speaking of alternative words, do I need a synonym for "Eskimo" to talk about this trope? I would think that to discuss a conventional idea, I would need to put it in the conventional form, not paraphrase it for politeness. People haven't been saying the Inuit have dozens of words for snow.

But, anyway, that's getting into the problem of whether the synonyms are numerous. I want to look at the question of the meaningfulness of the numerosity of synonyms. In English. 

I see "English has 3,000 words for being drunk" (BBC). We can start there.