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sycophant[sycophant 词源字典]

sycophant: [16] Sycophants are etymologically ‘fig-showers’. The word comes via Latin sychophanta from Greek súkophántēs, a compound formed from súkon ‘fig’ and -phántēs ‘shower’, a derivative of phaínein ‘show’ (source of English fancy, phantom, etc). Súkon (which probably came from a Semitic source that also produced Latin ficus ‘fig’, source of English fig) was used metaphorically for ‘cunt’, and hence for an ‘indecent gesture made by putting the thumb into the mouth or between two fingers’.

People who grassed on criminals were said to ‘show them the fig’ – ‘show them two fingers’, as it might be expressed in modern English. And so the term súkophántēs came to be used for an ‘informer’, and eventually, via ‘one who ingratiates himself by informing’, for a ‘flatterer’ or ‘toady’.
=> fancy, phantom, sycamore[sycophant etymology, sycophant origin, 英语词源]