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Plutarch's life of Solon also has this passage: Of the products of the soil, he allowed oil only to be sold abroad, but forbade the exportation of others; and if any did so export, the archon was to pronounce curses upon them, or else himself pay a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. His first table is the one which contains this law. One cannot, therefore, wholly disbelieve those who say that the exportation of figs also was anciently forbidden, and that the one who showed up, or pointed out such exporters, was called a "sycophant," or fig-shower.http:// http://makeashorterlink.com/?D1FB26D94In Greek sycophant meant an informer rather than what we mean by it today. Quinion pooh-poohs Plutarch's idea that originally it was someone who shopped fig-smugglers but does draw our attention to the OED definition of sycophant as "A mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle". http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-syc1.htmBingley
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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While not wanting to pooh-pooh Quinion (much), surely Plutarch would have been in a better position to make a pronouncement on the meaning of some contemporary Greek or Latin term than the admittedly nearly ominscient Michael?
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Carpal Tunnel
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contemporary Greek or Latin
If almost 700 years later counts as contemporary. Solon died 559BC, Plutarch 125AD. I could easily see Plutarch trying to clean things up for his audience.
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Pooh-Bah
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Waaaal, the pluty git was still a damned sight more contemporary with Solon and his apres-fig colon than MQ. Regardless. And, besides, any saying related to figs, bar newtons, went out of popularity not long after Plutarch became fig-tree fertiliser himself ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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a damned sight more contemporary
Yeahbut®, we have better access to post Empire archeological discoveries and less interest in preserving the purity of the Noble Greek.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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You mean that, chiselled out on a column somewhere, there's a message saying "Tell Michael Quinion that I don't give a fig if you use sycophant some way other other than as someone who grasses up fig smugglers."?
Just asking like. After all, they did find a grafitti with the Latin equivalent of "Kilroy was here" on a wall in Baku, of all places. Must have decided the quality of the oil wasn't good enough to pipe down to Roma, though, because they never took the place over. Come to think of it, they never even visited officially.
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Carpal Tunnel
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chiselled out on a column somewhere
Well, let's review the evidence:
We have
A) someone who is known to play softball, 700 years after, spouting something that sounds an awful lot like a folk etymology.
and
2) someone whose job it is to examine etymologies who says there isn't any evidence for the narc theory.
I'm not saying any more.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quinion doesn't say that Plutarch is wrong about the meaning of sycophant in his day (i.e., informer) or that it comes from the expression fig-shower. Just that he's wrong about why fig-shower should mean informer. The LSJ on Perseus has this comment in the entry for sukophantes: From sukon phainein, orig. used of denouncers of the attempted export of figs from Athens, acc. to Ister 35, Plu. Sol.24, 2.523b; orig. of citizens entrusted with the collection of figs as part of the public revenues of Athens and the denouncing of tax-evaders, acc. to Philomnest.1; of denouncers of figs which had been stolen from the sacred fig-trees during a famine and had become cheap, the famine having passed, Sch.Ar.Pl.31, cf. Fest. p.393 L.; these and modern explanations are mere guesses; the word first in Ar. but implied by sukopedilos.) http://makeashorterlink.com/?O2B1421A4Bingley
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