July 15, 1998

sycophant

Could you please tell me about the origin of "sycophant"? Is it anything like that of the much more recent "apple-polisher"?

They both mean the same thing, and they both involve fruit, but that's about it.

The only current sense of sycophant in English is 'a self-seeking, servile flatterer; a fawning parasite'. It is properly pronounced "SICK-uh-fnt," though versions with the first syllable being "SYKE," rhyming with "bike"; and with the last syllable being "fant," rhyming "ant," are also heard.

The 'servile flatterer' sense is an English innovation not found in the languages from which the word was borrowed, Latin (sycophanta) and Greek (sycophántés), in both of which the word meant 'an informer' (specifically, a person who habitually brought public prosecutions against other people). The word was common as a term of disparagement or abuse in the Attic orators.

English has the original sense 'an informer', though chiefly in a Greek historical context, and once had the sense 'a slanderer', now obsolete. Both of these senses are first recorded in the sixteenth century. The current English sense 'a servile flatterer' (a common concept, also represented in English by such words as lickspittle, toady, brown-noser, ass-kisser, and your apple-polisher) also developed in the sixteenth century.

The Greek word sycophántés derives from sykon 'a fig', and phántés 'one who shows', from phaínein 'to show' (ultimately also the source for English fantasy). The word thus means, literally, 'fig-shower'.

The origin of the term is still obscure; one suggestion is that it refers to the "fig," an obscene gesture which seems to have consisted of sticking the thumb between two fingers. An English equivalent might be 'a person who gives the finger'. However, it is still not clear why 'a person who makes an obscene gesture' would necessarily be connected to 'an informer'.

The English term apple-polisher, by the way, is first recorded in the late 1920s, and was used of students currying favor with teachers.