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Curry Noun & Verb
Independent on Sunday, The, Jun 10, 2007 by Nicholas Bagnall
A fine Independent front page showed Blair currying Bush's favour. Clearly nothing to do with the hot dish. No, this one is from Old French meaning to prepare, the same word as in curry-comb. The favour bit is more complicated. Here it's a 16th-century corruption of the obsolete favel, another word for fallow, a reddy- brown shade; a fallow horse was proverbially untrustworthy.
Someone currying favel was being nice to the wrong sort. Fa-vel became favour, a Latin remark, and the thing seems to have turned itself round so it was the currier, not the curried, who was contemptible.
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