A horse of a different choler

Q: I’ve read that the verb “curry” comes from the Old French correier and that the expression “curry favor” comes from a Middle French allegory about a horse named Fauvel. However, I can’t find correier or anything like it in the original text of the poem.

A: It’s more accurate to say that “curry favor” was inspired by (not “comes from”) the Roman de Fauvel, an anonymous 14th-century satirical poem, believed written by Gervais du Bus, about a horse fawned upon by the powerful in France.

There were several different words in early French that meant to “curry,” or groom, the coat of a horse, including correier and estriller in Old French (spoken from the 8th to 14th centuries), and torchier and estriler in Middle French (14th to 17th).

English borrowed the verb “curry” from correier, while the Roman de Fauvel uses the word torchier in the same sense.

In the satirical poem, the phrase torchier Fauvel (“to curry Fauvel”) is used as a metaphor for flattering and influencing him.

The earliest manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel (1310) is at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (MS Bnf 146). In this example, people from around the world flock to see the horse:

“N’i a nul qui ne s’appareille / De torchier Fauvel doucement” (“There is no one who is not ready to curry Fauvel gently”).

And in this example torchier rhymes with escorchier: “De Fauvel que tant voi torchier / Doucement, sans lui escorchier” (“Of Fauvel, whom so many come to curry, gently, without scratching him”).

The word fauvel in Middle French is an adjective meaning fawn-colored and apparently refers to the horse’s coat, but the author indicates that he’s also using it as an acronym for six sins:

“De Fauvel descent Flaterie, / Qui du monde a la seignorie, / Et puis en descent Avarice, / Qui de torchier Fauvel n’est nice, / Vilanie et Varieté, / Et puis Envie et Lascheté. / Ces siex dames que j’ai nommees / Sont par FAUVEL signifies.”

(“From Fauvel comes Flattery, whose world is the nobility, and then comes Avarice, who is not too squeamish to curry Fauvel, Villainy and Varieté [fickleness], and then Envy and Lascheté [cowardice]. These six ladies that I have named signify FAUVEL.”)

To create the acronym FAUVEL, the author treats the “v” of Vilanie as a “u.” In medieval French and English, the letters “u” and “v” could each denote either the vowel or the consonant, though “v” tended to be used at the beginning of a word (as in vilanie).

The medievalist Arthur Långfors notes in his introduction to the Roman de Fauvel (1914) that the horse’s name is also composed of the Middle French faus and vel (“false” and “veil”).

In addition, the Oxford English Dictionary points out that a similar Old French term, favel, meant idle talk or cajolery, and was derived from the Latin fabella, a diminutive of fabula, or “fable.”

When the verb “curry” first appeared in Middle English in the late 13th century, it meant “to rub down or dress (a horse, ass, etc.) with a comb,” according to the dictionary.

The first OED citation is from The South English Legendary (circa 1290), a Middle English collection of lives of saints and other church figures. In this expanded passage, St. Francis of Assisi refers to his flesh as “Frere Asse” and speaks of it in the third person:

“Of ȝeomere þingue heo is i-fed ȝwane heo alles comez þar-to, / And selde heo is i-coureyd wel” (“On humble food he is fed whenever he comes to it, and seldom is he properly curried”).

When Middle English borrowed “favor” from Old French in the 14th century, the OED says, it referred to “propitious or friendly regard, goodwill, esp. on the part of a superior or a multitude.”

The dictionary’s first example, which we’ve expanded, is from a Psalter and commentary, dated sometime before 1340, by the English hermit and mystic Richard Rolle:

“Thai doe wickidly, to get thaim the fauour and lufredyn of this warld” (“They do wickedly to get themselves the favor and affection of the world”). From Psalm 24:3 in Rolle’s Psalter.

In the late 14th century, the verb “curry” took on the sense of flattering, which the OED defines as “to employ flattery or blandishment, so as to cajole or win favour.”

The earliest citation is from The Testament of Love (1388), by Thomas Usk: “Tho curreiden glosours, tho welcomeden flatterers” (“Those who curried the sycophants, those who welcomed the flatterers”).

Oxford says the verb soon came to mean “to ‘stroke down’ (a person) with flattery or blandishment.” The first citation is from Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede (circa 1394), a medieval poem satirizing friars:

“Whou þey curry kinges & her back claweþ” (“How they curry kings and scratch their backs”). The anonymous satire, written in the style of Piers Ploughman, the 14th-century religious allegory, has been attributed to various writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, author of the original Ploughman.

We assume the flattering sense of “curry” in English was influenced by the Middle French allegory Roman de Fauvel. In fact, “curry favor” was originally “curry favel” when the expression first appeared in Middle English in the 15th century.

The OED defines “curry favel” as “to use insincere flattery, or unworthy compliance with the humour of another, in order to gain personal advantage.”

The first citation, which we’ve expanded and edited, is from De Regimine Principum (On the Government of the Prince, 1411), by the poet and bureaucrat Thomas Hoccleve:

“The man that hath in pees or in werre Dispent with his lorde his bloode, but he hide / The trouthe, and cory favelle, he not the ner is His lordes grace” (“The man who hath in peace or war spilled his blood for his lord, but hides the truth, and curries favel, is not near his lord’s grace”).

The phrase “curry favor” finally appeared in the 16th century.