sycophant

Note: The origin of Greek sȳkophántēs, applied in ancient Athens to private individuals who brought prosecutions in which they had no personal stake, was already under debate by ancient writers. The "apotropaic gesture" hypothesis given here was presented early on by Arthur Bernard Cook ("CΥΚΟΦΑΝΤΗC," The Classical Review, vol. 21, issue 5 [August, 1907], pp. 133-36); Cook also usefully summarizes ancient speculation (as the idea that the original sȳkophántēs denounced those who illegally exported figs from Attica). The objection has been made that the basic notion "one who makes the fig gesture" does not account for the extremely negative connotations of the word ("slanderer, calumniator, etc."), but other explanations (as, for example, that a sȳkophántēs revealed figs hidden in a malefactor's clothing, or initiated a prosecution for something of as little value as a fig) seem even less likely. A more nuanced, if not entirely convincing account, based on presumed fig metaphors in Athenian culture, is in Danielle Allen, The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 156 passim. — The application of sycophant to a flatterer, which departs entirely from the Greek meaning, is peculiar to the history of the word in English. In the sixteenth century English writers seem to have applied sycophant in particular to slanderous accusers who had found their way into the retinue of the powerful. Once the word became a generally used label for ill-willed people close to those in power, it presumably became associated with obsequious flattery, a stereotypical negative quality of such people.