Zenith and weekend word S

Comments on the previous post indicate that Rachel learned that I claimed "zenith" was a Greek word. Yeah, I was mistaken about that. I presumed it was from Greek because I knew that it was not a Latin word. But the real story of "zenith" is pretty interesting.
Back in the Middle Ages, there was an Arabic philosopher named Averroës who lived in Spain. He became so popular that scholars commenting on Aristotle used some Arabic terms that Averroës introduced. One of these was the word which got transliterated into Medieval Latin as "camt" or "cemt" meaning "road." When scribes copied scrolls with this word, at least one English scribe thought the "m" was "ni" (since they didn't use dots over "i"s yet), and wrote it as "cenit." That later became "cenith" then "zenith" meaning highest point. The opposite word is "nadir" which comes from an Arabic preposition which means "against" or "opposite." Averroës described a road above (the high road) which was preferable to its opposite below. Thus, zenith and nadir.
Now for the weekend word in S. There are just so many to choose from. I guess it will be a word that I used yesterday at work. The word is SYCOPHANT [SIK-uh-funt] and it does come from Greek meaning "one who makes the sign of the fig." What the heck is that?! Well, a fig-displayer in ancient Greece was a snitch (hey, we use "stool pigeon" to convey the same idea--does that make sense?). Sycophant is used in English to describe a "fawning parasite" (as the Webster's Unabridged puts it). Hey, maybe you will use this word at work, too.