(SIK-uh-fuhnt)

Means: A suck-up. Someone who flatters powerful people to get ahead.

Etymology: Greek sykophantēs, from sykon ("fig") + phainein ("to show"), so literally a "fig-shower." In ancient Athens it meant a professional snitch who hauled people into court on bogus charges. Nobody knows for sure where the figs come in. One old story says it started with informers ratting out fig smugglers, and another says it came from a rude hand gesture.

"Third time he's laughed at the boss's golf story tonight. Total sycophant."

Memphis was a group of Milan designers led by Ettore Sottsass. In 1981 they got sick of tasteful black-and-beige minimalism and rebelled with candy colors, squiggle-print plastic laminate, and furniture that looks stacked together from a toddler's blocks. They named it after Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," which kept playing on the turntable the night they started the group. It was always about objects more than buildings: bookcases, lamps, teapots, clocks, and the like. Karl Lagerfeld furnished his entire Monaco apartment in it, and David Bowie quietly collected about 100 pieces.

That plastic ball rattling around in a can of Guinness is called a widget, and it's how a can fakes a pub pour. Just before the can is sealed, the brewery adds a shot of liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen boils off, pressurizes the can, and pushes a little gas and beer into the ball through a pinhole. When you crack the can, the pressure drops and the ball squirts it all back out, which sets off the bubbles that build the creamy head. Guinness still brags that in a 2004 British poll, the widget beat the internet as the best invention of the previous 40 years.

My 401(k) and I have a lot in common. We both peaked a few years ago, and we both perform worse when somebody checks on us.

Turn WORK into GOLF in 5 steps, changing one letter at a time. Every step has to be a real word.

Answer in tomorrow's issue.