Where does the word "sycophant" come from?

The modern sycophant flatters the powerful. The original one attacked people in court, and the word that named him has figs in it.

Greek sykophantes combines sykon, "fig," with phainein, "to show." Literally it is "one who shows the fig." In Athens, Etymonline says, it meant a false accuser or slanderer. Michael Quinion of World Wide Words glosses it as an informer or a false accuser.

The question is what figs had to do with it, and nobody knows for certain.

The best-known answer is the export story. Athens supposedly banned the export of figs, and a sykophantes was a man who informed on smugglers. Quinion notes that Plutarch's writings suggest such a ban, but says there is no evidence for the link and that modern scholars dismiss it. Etymonline reports that the OED calls it unsubstantiated. The story is as old as the English word itself, and ancient writers already explained the phrase another way.

The favored explanation is a gesture. "Showing the fig" meant poking the thumb out between two fingers, an obscene and insulting sign. Fig was also slang for the female genitals, in Greek as later in English. On this view the informer was figuratively giving the fig to the people he denounced. Etymonline adds a variation: prominent politicians avoided the gesture themselves but urged their followers to taunt opponents with it. Both sources treat the gesture theory as plausible rather than proven. What is certain is the two Greek parts and the rudeness of the sign.

English picked up the word in the 1530s, still in its Latin form sycophanta. At first it meant an informer, a talebearer or a slanderer, a sense now obsolete. Quinion traces the drift. The informer became a tale-bearer reporting to someone more powerful, and then simply the servile hanger-on. By the 1570s, Etymonline says, a sycophant was a mean, servile flatterer, especially of princes and the great.

The result is a word that has kept its sting while changing its target. The ancient sycophant made his living by accusing people. The modern one gets ahead by agreeing with them.