lackey

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
lackey/ˈlaki/

▶noun (pl. lackeys)

• 1 a servant, especially a liveried footman or manservant.

• 2 a servile or obsequious person.

• 3 a brownish moth whose caterpillars live in groups in a silken shelter. [Malacosoma neustria.]

▶verb (lackeys, lackeying, lackeyed) archaic behave in a servile way towards.

– origin C16: from Fr. laquais, perh. from Catalan alacay, from Arab. al-ḵā'id ‘the chief’. Sense 3 derives from the resemblance of the coloured stripes of the caterpillars to a footman's livery.