a person obstinately and perversely wedded to some opinion or practice, particularly of a religious nature. Camden, perhaps, has hit upon the true original of the word. He relates, that when Rollo, duke of Normandy, received Gifla, 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, NE SE 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 bigodi, or bigots.

in Italian bigontia, is used to denote a Venetian liquid measure, containing the fourth part of the amphora, or half the boot.