I must look up 'bigot' in the dictionary, J. It's like when you think you know what it means, but may have been misusing it for years. I see it as sort of closed off thinking, to the exclusion of other's opinions and usually applied to religious or philosophical notions, but am now not sure. I wonder if 'Bigots' were an ancient group, like Vandals?
"Word History : Bigots 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 surely 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 French bigot meant "an excessively devoted or hypocritical person." Bigot is first recorded in English in 1598 with the sense "a superstitious hypocrite."
(Just as I suspected. The term 'bigot' is most frequently used by bigots themselves!)
Bigots are welcome here - they make a nice change from people who profess to hate bigotry.
ReplyDeleteI think bigotry is just another's viewpoint. But...just because they say it, doesn't make it so.
ReplyDeleteI must look up 'bigot' in the dictionary, J. It's like when you think you know what it means, but may have been misusing it for years. I see it as sort of closed off thinking, to the exclusion of other's opinions and usually applied to religious or philosophical notions, but am now not sure. I wonder if 'Bigots' were an ancient group, like Vandals?
ReplyDeleteOnline dictionary says:
ReplyDelete"Word History : Bigots 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 surely 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 French bigot meant "an excessively devoted or hypocritical person." Bigot is first recorded in English in 1598 with the sense "a superstitious hypocrite."
(Just as I suspected. The term 'bigot' is most frequently used by bigots themselves!)