the.com/bigot

Someone who mistook their first opinion for a fact and never got the memo.

means A person who clings to their own beliefs with stubborn intolerance, treating anyone who disagrees as wrong or beneath them.

from Murky and much-debated. The word surfaces in French by the 1500s as a slur for religious hypocrites, especially aimed at certain zealots, but where French got it is genuinely unsettled. Old folk tales claim it comes from a Norman duke's dismissive oath 'by God' (supposedly mangled into 'bigot'), but historians treat this as charming guesswork, not fact. What's solid is the meaning's drift: from a term for excessive religious zealotry to today's broader sense of someone pigheadedly intolerant of anyone who thinks differently.

origin
old french for hypocrite, meaning unclear
key trait
certainty that outlives the evidence
not synonym
disagreement; bigotry requires refusing to listen
the.com · every word