Curry Favor
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'Curry favor' has a fascinating derivation - The original form of this phrase was actually ‘to curry favel’. Favel was the name of a chestnut horse in a 14th-century French romantic tale who was renowned for his cunning and duplicity. ‘To curry Favel’ would literally have meant to stroke him or groom him (curry = to groom a horse with a special comb) but the expression came to have the extended meaning ‘to act deceitfully or hypocritically’. The romance features 'Fauvel' or 'Favvel', a fallow-colored horse who rises to prominence in the French royal court. The long narrative poem satirizes the self-serving hedonism and hypocrisy of men, and the excesses of the ruling estates, both secular and ecclesiastical. The name 'Favvel' can be broken down to mean "false veil", and also forms an acrostic F-A-V-V-E-L with the letters standing for the human vices: Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability (Fickleness), Envy, and Laxity. The romance also gave birth to the English expression "curry fauvel", the obsolete original form of "curry favor".
Listen to poem:
Oh I do like a good curry
spicy and hot,
with a lot of flavor,
fresh herbs and spices.
But I abhor your flattery
to fawn and curry favor
in vile ingratiation.
Such curry has a bitter flavour
and nips the bud of any favor sought.
It's a dish of foul curry and tainted rice,
topped with a sauce of greed and avarice.
Copyright © John Anderson | Year Posted 2018
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