curry favor

idiomatic phrase

: to seek to gain favor by flattery or attention

… eager to curry favor with superiors by reporting any trivial transgression.

—Robert Wallace and H. Keith Meltony

Instead of rolling back environmental regulations to curry favor with corporate interests, California has passed the toughest green laws in the nation …

—Alexander Nazaryan

Examples of curry favor in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Critics worry people who want to curry favor with the president, including foreign officials, could buy stock in the company, pushing the price up further along with his paper wealth. —Bernard Condon, Los Angeles Times, 10 Jan. 2025

Many have viewed this swelling financial support, and the recent visits made by multiple tech executives to Trump's residence in Florida, as an attempt to curry favor with the incoming president. —Paul Du Quenoy, Newsweek, 10 Jan. 2025

Google and Microsoft donate $1 million apiece to Trump’s inauguration / Tech leaders are lining up — and paying up — to curry favor with Trump. —Gaby Del Valle, The Verge, 9 Jan. 2025

There is even a colloquialism for those who curry favor among the moneyed on the island of Palm Beach. —Miami Herald Archives, Miami Herald, 8 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Note: The idiom curry favor is an alteration by folk etymology of curry favell, Middle English core favele, currey favel "to use insincere flattery to gain personal advantage," literally, "to curry the fallow-colored horse," a translation of Middle French estriller/torchier Fauvel "to use trickery, deceive," literally, "to curry/clean Fauvel" ("the fallow one," as a name for a horse). Old & Middle French falve, fauve "brownish-yellow, light brown (of an animal's coat)" and its derivatives have the additional meaning "false, hypocritical," probably in part due to the similarity in sound to faux "false"; hence la fauve asnele (ca. 1170) "hypocrisy, falsehood" (literally, "the fallow ass"), fauvoier (13th century) "to deceive," Old Occitan falveta "art of beguiling." Fauvel and Fauvain as horse's names are the focus of various idioms, as estriller Fauvel "to curry Fauvel," that denote duplicitous behavior. In the satirical French poem, Roman de Fauvel, composed ca. 1310-16, a horse or donkey named Fauvel becomes king by the grace of Fortuna ("Lady Fortune") and, having taken possession of the palace stable, is curried and cleaned by the hypocritical nobility and clergy of the realm.

First Known Use

1557, in the meaning defined above