bigot history

[Brad_Sinkler@ingerrand.com]

Thought some may find this interesting!

bigot (big et) noun
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics
 and is intolerant of those who differ.

[French, from Old French.]
Word History: A bigot may have more in common with God than one might
think. Legend has it that Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, refused to
kiss the foot
of the French king Charles III, uttering the phrase bi got, his borrowing
of the assumed Old English equivalent of our expression by God. Although
this story is
almost certainly apocryphal, it is true that bigot was used by the French
as a term of abuse for the Normans, but not in a religious sense. Later,
however,
the word, or very possibly a homonym, was used abusively in French for the
Beguines, members of a Roman Catholic lay sisterhood. From the 15th century

on Old Frenchbigot meant "an excessively devoted or hypocritical person."
Bigot is first recorded in English in 1598 with the sense "a superstitious
hypocrite."

Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language


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