Frogs in Popular Culture - Frogs and The French

Frogs and The French

  • The French custom of eating frog legs is the source of the English use of the derogatory nickname "frogs" for French people.
  • Queen Elizabeth I is known to have nicknamed the French François, Duke of Anjou, who unsuccessfully courted her in 1579, "frog" - on account of a frog-shaped earring he had given her. It is unclear whether this releates to the later English application of the nickname to all French people.

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Famous quotes containing the words frogs and/or french:

    “The standards of His Majesty’s taste made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the Statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival and bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded, and others burst.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    “This has been illustrated copiously each day with photographs taken by the author, reproduced by means of cuts such as only French newspaper-engravers can make, presumably etched on pieces of bread.”
    —Robert Benchley (1889–1945)