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BIGOT

Volume 2 · 115 words · 1778 Edition

a person obstinately and perseveringly wedded to some opinion or practice, particularly of a religious nature. Cambden, perhaps, has hit upon the true original of the word. He relates, that when Rollo, duke of Normandy, received Gilda, the daughter of Charles the foolish, in marriage, together with the investiture of that dukedom, he would not submit to kiss Charles's foot; and when his friends urged him by all means to comply with that ceremony, he made answer in the English tongue, "Never by God, i.e. Not so by God." Upon which, the king and his courtiers deriding him, and corruptly repeating his answer, called him bigot; from whence the Normans were called bigodis, or bigors.