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Today a couple of those “why didn’t I think of wondering about this before?” things.
First, why is a bald eagle called a bald eagle when, as you can see from the picture, it isn’t bald-headed? The answer appears to be that the word bald can also be used to mean “white” or “partially white”. That was news to me.
Next, where does the word bigot come from? When I asked myself this question, I guessed French, and I was sort of right. According to the OED it comes from Middle French. It appears to have been used as a term of abuse for Normans, and was also used as a by-name in Middle English. However, ultimately the term may have been a distortion of By God, from English or some other Germanic language.
Photo credit: W. Lloyd MacKenzie
The same etymology is given for the Spanish word “bigote” for ‘moustache’. The reasoning is that when the Emperor Charles V became King Charles I of Spain, he brought his moustachioed Flemish advisers with him, and they were forever twirling their moustaches, and saying “Bij God!” Which suggests the question, ‘Did no Spaniards wear moustaches up to that time?’
Anatoly Liberman (the ‘Oxford Etymologist’) wrote a longish piece on his blog looking at the history of bigot here:
http://blog.oup.com/2011/10/bigot-2/
He is leaning towards a suggestion that the word is aphetic for Albigot ‘Albigensian’. I am not so sure, but there is a nice summary of the evidence there.
Mark,
Thank you for that. Fascinating.