Curry favour

Origin of: Curry favour

Curry favour

This expression has nothing whatsoever to do with Indian food. In The Middle Ages, curry meant to prepare, groom and equip horses, from the Old French correier meaning to make ready. By the 14th century, the phrase had morphed into curryfavel, which meant a flatterer, deriving from a French fable about a deceitful, ingratiating donkey, named Favel, who fooled the rich and famous and became the personification of flattery. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, English speakers simply misheard curryfavel and it became curry favour, which of course is the way to ingratiate oneself through flattery, thereby evolving into the phrase that we know today.