We all recognize curry as the name of a spicy, aromatic food, but the etymological storytellers tend to give this kind of curry short shrift in favor of another older word curry that isn’t used much except in the expression “to curry favor.”

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Curry the food came into English from Tamil in 1598 but the other curry came to English from French along with William the Conqueror.

It isn’t strictly true that curry the food came into English from Tamil.

The first Englishman to write about curry hadn’t actually tasted it.  He was translating a kind of travel guide that was actually written by a Dutchman.

The Dutch were aggressive traders and had been looking for new ways to make money and had sent a pair of brothers, Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman, to check out what the Portuguese were doing. The brothers got arrested in Portugal for what amounts to industrial espionage; they tried to steal the maps of East Indian trade routes that were valuable for the spices they might provide.

Despite killing more than half the crew on their subsequent journey to get the spices, these brothers were successful and made a bundle when they arrived home with their precious cargo. A book was written about them in Dutch and translated into English and was such a success that the Translator did it again for another voyage.

It was that second one that brought to us this word curry, that had in Tamil meant “sauce for rice.”

About 300 years before, an earlier meaning for the word curry appeared.

To curry favor means to ingratiate oneself, usually with a superior.

There is a slight sense of sucking up about the expression curry favor.

It didn’t used to be favor, but instead favel so people used to curry favel.  This is a word we don’t use any more but it in turn is related to fallow—a field that hasn’t been planted is left fallow.

A fallow field looks like dead grass and has a tan brown shade.  Thus these words fallow and favel also took on a meaning of light brown color.  From there horses that were of similar color began to be called favel. That earlier existence of the word curry meant to “brush” or “rub down,” so that to curry favor originally meant to rub down a brown horse.

No one really knows why this equine image should mean to “suck up,”—perhaps it was the stable hand sucking up to the horse’s owner, maybe it was just that rubbing down made the horse happy—but there are identical expressions in French and German.

Before I go, some weeks ago I mentioned a top secret word website that was getting ready to launch.  It’s out there now so I’m officially allowed to tell you—though you may already know—the website is wordnik.com.