Sycophant

Nice word but with an even more fascinating origin

You may know that 'sycophant' means someone who flatters another person, possibly insincerely and probably to gain favour with them.  But did you know the fasinating origin of this word?  It comes from the Greek and its literal meaning is 'fig shower' - that's 'shower' to rhyme with 'mower' not 'hour'.

Apparently, there was a vulgar gesture used by the ancient Greeks that they referred to as the fig.  I will leave you to imagine it.  If you showed someone the fig it indicated that you thought they were an informer, providing information to the authorities about people who were stealing fruit. 

It may be me getting confused, but if the sycophant was the fig shower, surely the meaning has reversed over the years?

Comments

• According to Michael Quinnon at World Wide Words (http://www.worldwidewords.org) it has indeed changed meaning over the years. He says: ‘When sycophant first appeared in English in the sixteenth century it had this original meaning of an informer, but quickly moved through a sense of someone who bears tales to a person of higher status to its modern sense. This the big Oxford English Dictionary explains in one of its better definitions as “A mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle”.’

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