The Short Version
This widely repeated explanation captures a real sociolinguistic backdrop — French was the prestige language of post-Conquest elites — but presents an unverified folk etymology as settled historical fact. The specific causal mechanism (nobles ate, peasants raised) originated as a 17th-century hypothesis, not documented medieval reality. French meat terms did not enter English until around 1300, roughly 250 years after the Conquest, and French speakers also used words for live animals, undermining the strict class-segregation premise the claim depends on.