Etymology

honi soit qui mal y pense

Today it means: The motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter, still used in the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. Full definition →

Middle French honi soit qui mal y pense
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Middle French · borrowed fromhoni soit qui mal y pense
  2. English todayhoni soit qui mal y pense

Borrowed from Middle French honi soit qui mal y pense (literally “shamed be whoever thinks bad of it” or “shame be to him who thinks evil of it”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.