sycophant

• n.お世辞を言う人；お世辞を言う人
• adj.

ラテン語のsycopantaから、ギリシア語のsykophantes、情報提供者、中傷者、文字通りイチジクを見せる者、sykon、イチジク、-phant、見せる、表示する、エピファニー、ファンタズムの語源。

sycophant

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 (n.)

1530s (in Latin form sycophanta), "informer, talebearer, slanderer," from Middle French sycophante and directly from Latin sycophanta, from Greek sykophantes "false accuser, slanderer," literally "one who shows the fig," from sykon "fig" (see fig) + phainein "to show" (see phantasm). "Showing the fig" was a vulgar gesture made by sticking the thumb between two fingers, a display which vaguely resembles a fig, itself symbolic of a vagina (sykon also meant "vulva"). The modern accepted explanation is that prominent politicians in ancient Greece held aloof from such inflammatory gestures, but privately urged their followers to taunt their opponents. The sense of "mean, servile flatterer" is first recorded in English 1570s.

The explanation, long current, that it orig. meant an informer against the unlawful exportation of figs cannot be substantiated. [OED]

1. But I 'll be danned if I 'll be blocked by some sycophant in the White House.

でもホワイトハウスのおべっか使いに呪われているかもしれません。

2.She was all over him at the office party.what a sycophant ！

オフィスパーティーの時、彼は彼女に親切で、おべっか使いだ！

3.A sycophant flatterer is neither a guru or a preacher.

媚び者は古代のものでも宣教師でもない。

4.Bestowing favor on a dubious sycophant often lead to the downfall of dynasties.

寵愛用奸佞は歴代王朝の亡国の重要な原因である。