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.
Read more about this topic: Frogs In Popular Culture
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)
“The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)