curry favor

Meaning

To seek to gain favor by flattery or attention.

Synonyms

curry favour

flatter

fawn on

curry favour

court favor

court favour

woo

fawn

play up

suck up

toady

adulate

Translations

تزلف

anbiedern

faire la cour

fayoter

slijmen

een wit voetje halen

bajular

adular

hacer la pelota

yaltaklanmak

Etymology

Originally from a French poem Roman de Fauvel, written in the early 1300s; Fauvel was a conniving stallion, and the play was a satire on the corruption of social life. The name Fauvel points to the French fauve (“chestnut, reddish-yellow, or fawn”), another sense of fauve meaning the class of wild animals whose coats are at least partly brown, and the medieval belief that a fallow horse was a symbol of deceit and dishonesty. The phrase curry Fauvel, then, referred to currying (“combing”) the horse, and was altered (as folk etymology) by later speakers to curry favor.