from the Greek suko-phantes, “fig-blabbers.” The men
of Athens passed a law forbidding the exportation of figs; the law was
little more than a dead letter, but there were always found mean
fellows who, for their own private ends, impeached those who violated
it; hence sycophant came to signify first a government toady, and then
a toady generally.
“I here use `sycophant' in its original sense, as a wretch who
flatters the prevailing party by informing against his neighbours,
under pretence that they are exporters of prohibited flgs.” —Coleridge: Biography, vol. iii. chap. x. p. 286.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
