I’ve known for a long time that sycophant comes from Ancient Greek σῡκοϕάντης ‘(professional) informer, someone who says bad things about public figures for pay’ (literally ‘fig-shower’: σῦκον ‘fig’ + ϕαν-, root of ϕαίνειν ‘to show’—nobody knows how the sense developed, though there are many theories); what I didn’t realize until now is that French preserves the original sense of ‘informer,’ and that the word originally had this sense in English as well (the OED, in an entry that hasn’t been updated since 1919, traces both “informer, tale-bearer, malicious accuser” and “mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer” back to the 16th century, but the first sense died out pretty early, after the 17th century turning up only in phrasing like “the informers, or sycophants as they were called at Athens”). I discovered this via a ТЕТРАДКИ post (in Russian) by Alexander Anichkin, or Sashura as he calls himself around these parts, which discusses a recent contretemps in which one Russian journalist made fun of another for using the word сикофант [sikofant] in the English sense of ‘self-seeking flatterer’ when the Russian word (which is rare enough it’s not included in the Oxford dictionary) has the French sense of ‘informer.’ Sashura points out that the journalist being mocked has English as a primary foreign language, while the mocker knows French. An interesting run-in, and I wonder if the Russian word will develop a confusing double sense because English is now so widely known.
Incidentally, my New Great Russian-English Dictionary (which I made fun of here) has the unhelpful definition “сикофант m sycophant, informer,” and my Kettridge’s French/English English/French Dictionary has the even less helpful entry “sycophante m, sycophant.” Dudes, get your heads out of the seventeenth century!
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