bigot
Meaning
- One who is narrow-mindedly devoted to their own ideas and groups, and intolerant of (people of) differing ideas, races, genders, religions, politics, etc.
- (obsolete) One who is overly pious in matters of religion, often hypocritically or else superstitiously so.
Concepts
bigot
zealot
holier-than-thou
fanatic
maniac
oaf
racialist
racist
countryman
redneck
chauvinist
misogynist
sexist
monster of cruelty
Pietist
religionist
fiend
hothead
partisan
sectary
sanctimonious person
Heliogabalus
belief
creed
ethnic minority
faith
supremacism
religion
Frequency
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ˈbɪɡət/
Etymology
From French bigot (“a sanctimonious person; a religious hypocrite”), from Middle French bigot, from Old French bigot, of disputed origin. It is most often believed to have derived from the identical Old French derogatory term bigot applied to the overly religious Normans, said to be known for frequently swearing Middle English bi God (“by God”) (compare Old English bī god, Middle High German bī got, Middle Dutch bi gode), which is also thought to be the origin of the surname Bigott, Bygott. (Compare the French use of "goddamns" to refer to the English in Joan of Arc's time, and les sommobiches (see son of a bitch) during World War I). From meaning "someone overly religious" it came to mean "someone overly devoted to their own religious opinion", and then to its current sense. The French Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales supports the Germanic origin theory above. Liberman however opines that this has "too strong a taste of a folk etymological guess invented in retrospect" and prefers Grammont et al.'s theory that it derives from Albigot (“inhabitant of Albi”), named after the commune in southern France where Catharism (also known as Albigensianism) is thought to have originated. Online Etymology Dictionary, however, does not list Grammont and Liberman's theory among their possible origins.
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