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Origin and history of sycophant

sycophant(n.)

1530s (in Latin form sycophanta), "informer, talebearer, slanderer" (a sense now obsolete), from French sycophante and directly from Latin sycophanta, from Greek sykophantēs "false accuser, slanderer," literally "one who shows the fig," from sykon "fig" (see fig (n.1)) + phainein "to show" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine").

"Showing the fig" was a vulgar gesture made typically by sticking the thumb between two fingers. That it was considered obscene and insulting is all that is sure. A split fig was symbolic of a vagina (sykon also meant "vulva"). The thumb-poking-between-the-fingers gesture has been a sexual image in various times and places; see fig (n.1).

The usual modern explanation of the use of the word in reference to certain persons in ancient Greece is that prominent politicians held aloof from scurrilous gestures but privately urged followers to taunt their opponents.

The explanation, long current, that it orig. meant an informer against the unlawful exportation of figs cannot be substantiated. [OED, 2nd ed. print, 1989]

That discarded explanation is as old as the word's use in English, and the phrase already was explained differently in antiquity. The general sense of "parasite; mean, servile flatterer" especially of princes or the great is recorded in English by 1570s.

also from 1530s

Entries linking to sycophant

fig(n.1)

early 13c., from Old French figue "fig" (12c.), from Old Provençal figa, from Vulgar Latin *fica, corresponding to Latin ficus "fig tree, fig," which, with Greek sykon, Armenian t'uz is "prob. fr. a common Mediterranean source" [Buck], possibly a Semitic one (compare Phoenician pagh "half-ripe fig"). A reborrowing of a word that had been taken directly from Latin as Old English fic "fig, fig-tree."

The insulting sense of the word in Shakespeare, etc. (A fig for ...) is 1570s (in 17c. sometimes in Italian form fico), in part from fig as "small, valueless thing," but also from Greek and Italian use of their versions of the word as slang for "vulva," apparently because of how a ripe fig looks when split open [Rawson, Weekley]. Giving the fig (Old French faire la figue, Spanish dar la higa) was an indecent gesture of ancient provenance, made by putting the thumb between two fingers or into the mouth, with the intended effect of the modern gesture of "flipping the bird" (see bird (n.3)). Also compare sycophant.

Use of fig leaf in figurative sense of "flimsy disguise" (1550s) is from Genesis iii.7. Fig-faun translates Latin faunus ficarius (Jeremiah l.39). Fig Newtons (by 1907) are named for Newton, Massachusetts.

sycophancy(n.)

"obsequious flattery, mean tale-bearing and other characteristics of a sycophant," 1620s, from sycophant + abstract noun suffix -cy, or else from Latin sycophantia, from Greek sykophantia "false accusation, slander; conduct of a sycophant," from sykophantēs.