The etymologies of ballot and bigot

That's all I've got, so far, for linguistic commentary on the U.S. election results.

According to the OED, the etymology of ballot is

< (i) Middle French ballotte (French †ballotte) small ball (beginning of the 15th cent. as †balote), small coloured ball placed in a container to register a secret vote (1498) or its etymon (ii) Italian (originally regional (northern)) ballotta, †balota small ball (13th cent.), small coloured ball placed in a container to register a secret vote (1313; < balla (see bale n.3) + ‑otta ‑ot suffix).

And the entry for -ot  says "Forming diminutive nouns. (No longer productive.)"

The suffix -ot was apparently never very productive in English — the OED lists only

piet "The magpie, Pica pica" nysot "A wanton young woman; (also) a fool or simpleton." carlot "A churl, carl, peasant."

I was surprised to see that the OED's list of -ot words doesn't include bigot, which is why I'm taking you down the bigot rabbit hole.

The OED entry for bigot just tells us that it came from French, suggests that Italian bigotto was also borrowed from French, and attributes French bigot to

< either English by God or an equivalent expression in another Germanic language (although there is apparently no evidential basis for this supposition)

with a possible connection to a 12th-century "offensive name given to the Normans", noting that "If not directly connected, it is likely that both words show the same or a similar ultimate etymology".

Wiktionary has essentially the same eytmology for ballot as the OED, except that it gives precedence to Italian over French, and brings in Germanic as the origin of "ball":

Borrowed from Italian balota (obsolete), ballotta (“small ball, especially one used to register a vote”), from balla (“bale, bundle”) + -otta (suffix forming diminutive nouns); or from Middle French balote (obsolete), ballotte (“small ball used to register a vote”) (also compare Middle French balotiage, French ballottage (“second ballot, runoff”)); both ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *ballu (“ball”).

Wiktionary give three senses for the Italian suffix -otto, noting that "The diminutive and pejorative senses of the suffix sometimes overlap":

1. suffix used to form diminutives, especially with an endearing connotation
2. suffix used to form pejoratives
3. used to form demonyms and demonymic adjectives

Wiktionary also gives us 6 "Italian terms suffixed with -otta" and 74 "Italian terms suffixed with -otto".

This page explaining Italian alterazioni says that -otto "paradoxically combines strength and vigor with a likable clumsiness", giving the examples

• giovane (youngster) » giovanotto (young man, bachelor)
• contadino (peasant) » contadinotto (stout peasant)

Wiktionary's etymology for bigot expands on the "by God" idea:

From French bigot (“a sanctimonious person; a religious hypocrite”), from Middle French bigot, from Old French bigot, of disputed origin. It is most often believed to have derived from the identical Old French derogatory term bigot applied to the overly religious Normans, said to be known for frequently swearing Middle English bi God (“by God”) (compare Old English bī god, Middle High German bī got, Middle Dutch bi gode), which is also thought to be the origin of the surname Bigott, Bygott. (Compare the French use of "goddamns" to refer to the English in Joan of Arc's time, and les sommobiches (see son of a bitch) during World War I). From meaning "someone overly religious" it came to mean "someone overly devoted to their own religious opinion", and then to its current sense.

The French Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales supports the Germanic origin theory above. Liberman however opines that this has "too strong a taste of a folk etymological guess invented in retrospect" and prefers Grammont et al.'s theory that it derives from Albigot (“inhabitant of Albi”), named after the commune in southern France where Catharism (also known as Albigensianism[3]) is thought to have originated. Online Etymology Dictionary, however, does not list Grammont and Liberman's theory among their possible origins.

That's Anatoly Liberman, not me (and not a known relative of mine). Anatoly wrote at length about bigot on the OED blog in 2011 — "Nobody wants to be called a bigot" (pdf version for those who have trouble accessing the online page):

Nobody wants to be called a bigot, but accusations of bigotry are hurled at political opponents with great regularity, because (obviously) everyone who disagrees with us is a bigot, and it is to the popularity of this ignominious word that I ascribe the frequency with which I am asked about its origin. […]

Wherever it came from, the word has changed its meaning since the old days. It used to mean “hypocrite; someone who professes his religious views with excessive zeal.” Today a bigot is a fanatic, a dyed in the wool adherent of some political doctrine (which, as pointed out, does not coincide with ours).

The questions asked in connection with bigot are four:

1. 1. Does bigot have anything to do with the word god?
   2. Is bigot (from an etymological point of view) the same word as Spanish bigote “moustache”?
   3. Is Romance big- “goat” the root of bigot?
   4. Did bigot, if it was coined as a term of abuse, target some religious group?

For his answers to these questions, you should read the whole thing — but I can't resist quoting how he starts:

Before I answer those questions, I should warn our readers against the information one can occasionally find in the Internet and in printed sources. For example, in October 1997, the Catholic Digest published on pp. 117-120 an article titled “Asphalt, Bigot, and Comma.” It informed the subscribers that asphalt goes back to Leopold von Asphalt (1802-1880), that bigot derives from Nathaniel Bigot (1575-1660), an English Puritan preacher, and that comma traces back to Domenico da Comma (1264-1316), an Italian Dominican scholar whose signature punctuation mark led to a charge of heresy by the Inquisition (commas, apparently, were not found in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible and were therefore considered an insult to God). Many other gentlemen, including Mr. Botch, Mr. Doldrum, and Mr. Fiasco, enlivened the pages of that publication. I wrote a politely indignant letter to the editor but received no answer. Beware of amateur etymologists.

I'll close with his picture of Salvador Dali, captioned as "a person who was certainly an ‘hombre de bigotes’ but not a bigot":

Update — Philip Anderson asks: "Does ’harlot’ not belong to the same category? Wiktionary suggests it is a diminutive."

The OED's etymology:

< Anglo-Norman harlot, Anglo-Norman and Middle French herlot, arlot (plural herloz, herlos) vagabond, beggar (12th cent.), rogue, scoundrel (14th cent.) < a first element of uncertain origin (probably originally the same word as the first element of harlequin n.) + ‑ot suffix.

The OED invites us to

Compare post-classical Latin harlotus, herelotus vagrant, hedge-priest (from 13th cent. in British sources), arlotus, erlotus glutton (14th cent.).

So why isn't harlot on the -ot list? Maybe the deciding issue is which side of the channel the word was formed on?

Wiktionary offers:

From Middle English harlot, from Old French harlot, herlot, arlot (“vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin. Likely to be ultimately of Germanic origin, either from a derivation of *harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or from a diminutive of *karilaz (“man; fellow”). Compare English carlot.

And carlot is on the OED's -ot list. So…