curry favor
English
Alternative forms
- curry favour (British and Commonwealth)
Etymology
Originally from a French poem Roman de Fauvel, written in the early 1300s; Fauvel was a conniving stallion, and the play was a satire on the corruption of social life. The name Fauvel points to the French fauve ('chestnut, reddish-yellow, or fawn'), another sense of fauve meaning the class of wild animals whose coats are at least partly brown, and the medieval belief that a fallow horse was a symbol of deceit and dishonesty. The phrase curry Fauvel, then, referred to currying (or combing) the horse, and was altered by later speakers to curry favor.
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
curry favor (third-person singular simple present curries favor, present participle currying favor, simple past and past participle curried favor)
- (idiomatic) To seek to gain favor by flattery or attention.
- 2019 May 5, Danette Chavez, “Campaigns are Waged On and Off the Game Of Thrones Battlefield (Newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 28 January 2021:
- Unlike Sansa, Daenerys can’t rely on her family name to curry favor; unlike Jon or even Arya, she can’t regale the Northerners with tales of exploits, though that’s probably for the best when it comes to her “liberating” Yunkai and Meereen.
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Translations
to seek to gain favor by flattery
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References
- Michael Quinion (2004), “Curry favor”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.
- "Curry your favor" from Green band, Album Green, 1986.