[big-uh
t] 
| a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion. |
| big·ot (bĭg'ət) n. One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. [French, from Old French.] Word History: Bigots may have more in common with God than one might think. Legend has it that Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, refused to kiss the foot of the French king Charles III, uttering the phrase bi got, his borrowing of the assumed Old English equivalent of our expression by God. Although this story is almost surely apocryphal, it is true that bigot was used by the French as a term of abuse for the Normans, but not in a religious sense. Later, however, the word, or very possibly a homonym, was used abusively in French for the Beguines, members of a Roman Catholic lay sisterhood. From the 15th century on Old French bigot meant "an excessively devoted or hypocritical person." Bigot is first recorded in English in 1598 with the sense "a superstitious hypocrite." |
bigot
A person who is religiously attached to a particular computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see religious issues). Usually found with a specifier; thus, "Cray bigot", "ITS bigot", "APL bigot", "VMS bigot", "Berkeley bigot". Real bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the favoured tool. It is truly said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." Compare weenie.
[The Jargon File]