Mid 16th century (denoting an informer): from French sycophante, or via Latin from Greek sukophantēs 'informer', from sukon 'fig' + phainein 'to show', perhaps with reference to making the insulting gesture of the ‘fig’ (sticking the thumb between two fingers) to informers.

• This is a story of figs and flattery. The Greek word sukophantēs meant ‘informer’. It was based on sukon ‘fig’ (also the root of sycamore (Middle English) and originally used for a fig tree) and phainein ‘to show’, and so literally meant ‘a person who shows the fig’. Some people have suggested that this related to the practice of informing against people who illegally exported figs from ancient Athens, as recorded by the Greek biographer Plutarch. A more likely explanation is that the term referred to an obscene gesture known as ‘showing (or making) the fig’. When sycophant entered the English language in the 1530s it meant ‘an informer’, and soon also ‘a person who tells tales or spreads malicious reports about someone’. The modern sense of ‘a servile flatterer’ probably comes from the notion that you can ingratiate yourself with someone in authority either by slandering others or by flattering the person in question.