There are four words in English, sycophant, hierophant, elephant, and triumphant. They all end with "phant." I don't know of any other words in English with this "phant." Is this significant? Is phant a rare suffix in English?

Not only is it not an English suffix, they don't even share the same origin (except sycophant and hierophant). So where did they actually come from, then?

This is the one with the most distant connection to Ancient Greek. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows the word triumphant, but in case you don't, here:

triumphant, adj.
iiiiii1: victorious, conquering
iiiiii2: rejoicing for or celebrating victory
iiiiii3: notably successful
iiiiii4: (archaic) of or relating to a triumph

So yeah, triumph but adjective, pretty simple.

It comes from Old French (the image was more relevant than it seemed), which is from Latin triumphāns.

triumphāns
iiiiii1: triumphing
iiiiii2: exalting, rejoicing

Triumphāns is the present participle form of the verb triumphō, triumphō is from the noun triumphus, from Old Latin triumpus, from Etruscan *θriampe, and finally from Ancient Greek θρίαμβος, which is a hymn to Dionysus apparently.

From there the origin becomes unclear, and I don't feel like talking about the speculations.

If somehow you don't know what an elephant is, it's the thing above. Elephant comes from Middle English elefant, from Old French elefant. In Middle French it got re-latinized to elephant, and English probably copied it during its fad for French looking words.

Old French got it from Latin elephantus, from Ancient Greek ἐλέφᾱς elephas (genitive form: ἐλέφαντος elephantos). Again, origins from there is unclear. Speculations include Proto-Berber *eḷu and Egyptian ꜣbw. So, yeah. Fairly simple.

I couldn't find something good that wasn't a tarot card. So hierophant has rather straightforward origins, and in fact this origin does involve phant being a suffix, ish. Just not English.

hierophant
iiiiii1: a priest in Ancient Greece; specifically, the chief priest of the Eleusinian mysteries
iiiiii2: expositor, advocate

It comes from Ancient Greek ἱεροφάντης, which means practically the same thing. This in turn is a combination of ἱερός ("holy") and the verb φαίνω ("show"), with a suffix -της that indicates a masculine agent (i.e. a doer man).

This is pretty self-explanatory: hierophants historically interpreted sacred mysteries, so they were literally in charge of showing others the holy things. Thus, holy-showing-guy.

Sycophant is a fun word. It's the formal version of ass-kisser. Someone who flatters another in order to gain. But it didn't always mean that. It comes from Latin sȳcophanta. What did it mean then?

sȳcophanta, n.
iiiiii1: a snitch, informant
iiiiii2: a slanderer
iiiiii3: a trickster

How did it make that change in meaning? I dunno, but it shares a theme of malice and disingenuousness, so it's not a bizarre change. So, sȳcophanta came from Ancient Greek συκοφάντης.

συκοφάντης, n.
iiiiii1: informant, denouncer (in court)
iiiiii2: professional swindler

So now a bit of history. The sycophant in Ancient Greece is generally understood to be somebody who abused the ancient Athenian legal system by bringing unjustified legal cases, either for profit via payment for prosecution or blackmail, or to harass or subdue the accused.

Now, συκοφάντης is a combination of the verb φαίνω (remember before, "show"), with the noun σῦκον ("fig") and the suffix -της again, for doer man. So sycophant comes from Greek that's basically fig-showing-guy.

Why is a fig involved? Well, we have a lot of theories. One proposal is that it has to do with the gesture of showing a fig using a thumb between two fingers (see image above). This was Ancient Greece's middle finger, cuz the word for fig was also used for vulva.

So one proposal is that showing the fig was something politicians encouraged their followers to do as a taunt to their opponents, without the politicians doing it themselves. Other theories point to things like exportation of figs and false accusations of doing so, harvesting figs as a metaphor, and so on.

These are all considered retroactive folklore explanations though, that were made after the actual origin was lost to time. It is presumed to have been a somewhat obscene word, however, possibly connected to a variety of symbolism revolving figs.

So, that's four words. What did they have in common? They all came from Greek at some point. Only hierophant and sycophant involved a phant being stuck to another word, and those two were also the only two where Greek was the definitive end of the trail.

However, it's pretty clear that phant is not a real suffix in English. The appearance of phant in four words is largely coincidental. Plus, only four words? I dunno what the rarest suffix in English is, but I guarantee it occurs more than four times.

But hey, I learned that figs were apparently a whole thing in Ancient Greece. So that's neat.

Hope you liked it, or didn't, or didn't read it. Have a good whenever time it is.