sb. and a. [a. F. bigot, of unknown origin: see below.] A. sb.
† 1. a. A hypocritical professor of religion, a hypocrite. b. A superstitious adherent of religion.
1598. Speght, Chaucer, Bigin, bigot, superstitious hypocrite [1602 adds or hypocriticall woman].
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, I. xl. He is no bigot or hypocrite.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Bigot (Fr.), an hypocrite, or one that seems much more holy then he is, also a scrupulous or Superstitious fellow.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., 436. One part of their Church becomes Sotts and Bigots.
2. A person obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a particular religious creed, opinion or ritual.
1661. Cowley, Cromwell, Wks. II. 655. He was rather a well-meaning and deluding Bigot, than a crafty and malicious Impostor.
1741. Watts, Improv. Mind, i. Wks. (1813), 14. A dogmatist in religion is not a long way off from a bigot.
1844. Stanley, Arnold, II. viii. 13. [Dr. Arnold] was almost equally condemned, in London as a bigot, and in Oxford as a latitudinarian.
b. transf. (Of other than religious opinions.)
1687. Congreve, Old Bach., I. v. Yet is adored by that bigot Sir Joseph Wittol as the image of valour.
1838. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. vii. § 14 I. 395. Lord Bacon, certainly no bigot to Aristotle.
1863. Kingsley, Water-Bab., vi. 290. The children of Prometheus are … the bigots, and the bores.
3. Comb., as bigot-maker.
a. 1720. Sheffield (Dk. Buckhm.), Wks. (1753), II. 155. The best of all the Bigot-makers that ever I read of.
B. adj. [Often merely attrib. use of sb.]
1623. Ld. Herbert, in Ellis, Orig. Lett., I. 298. III. 164. The most common censure, even of the bigot party.
1680. Dryden, Kind Keeper, Ep. Ded. In a Country more Bigot than ours.
1751. Smollett, Per. Pic., lxii. The crazed Tory, the bigot Wnig.
1844. Kinglake, Eöthen, xxvii. (1878), 345. Old-bigot zeal against Christians.
[In OF. Bigot appears first in the romance of Girart de Roussillon (12th c.) as the proper name of some people, apparently of the south of Gaul. Hence already in the 17th c. it was suggested by Caseneuve, that it might be an OF. form of Wisigothus, Visigoth; the relations between the Visigoths of Toulouse who were Arians, and the Franks who were Catholics, being such as readily to attach to the name of the former the connotation of ‘detestable foreigner’ or ‘foreign heretic.’ But modern Romanic scholars find phonetic difficulties, besides that there is no evidence that the name Wisigothi was preserved in the vulgar tongue. Slender support to some connection with the Goths is suggested by the med.L. form Bigothi (Du Cange). Whether the Sp. bigote, moustache, is in any way connected, cannot be decided. According to Wace bigoz, bigos was applied opprobriously by the French to the Normans, which shows that the word had then acquired some connotative force; the legend that it originated in the refusal of Hrolf or Rollo to kiss the foot of Charles the Simple, when, in the words of the 12th c. chronicler, ‘lingua Anglica (!!!) respondit Ne se, bi got, quod interpretatur Ne per Deum’ (No by God!), is absurdly incongruous with facts. The opprobrious sense in Wace was certainly not that of ‘superstitious’ or ‘hypocrite,’ as in later F. and Eng.; materials to show how the latter was developed are wanting, but there is evidence to show that the feminine bigote was subsequently applied in opprobrium to the Beguines (see Beguta, Bigutta, in Du Cange): our first quotation identifies bigot with bigin or beguine. In early times the word became a Norman family name as in Roger Bigod earl of Norfolk.]
