Meanings
- literaryCourtesy, refinement; gentleness.
[…] nor loved he less / Stately lords in palaces, / Princely women hard to please, / Fenced by form and ceremony, / Decked by courtly rites and dress / And etiquette of gentilesse.
1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude2 more examples
1913, Francis Thompson, "Love's Almsman Plaineth His Fare" in The Complete Poems of Francis Thompson, New York: Modern Library, no date, p. 252, https://archive.org/details/completepoemsoff00thomiala Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, / And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, / That the most strainedst charity of earth / Distasteth soon to render back the whole / Of thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse?
[…] in consideration of your youth and the ill nurture, devoid of all gentilesse and courtesy, which you have doubtless had in the land of slaves and tyrants, we are disposed to set you free, unharmed […]
1954, C. S. Lewis, chapter 15, in The Horse and His Boy, Collins, published 1998
Origin
- Old Frenchgentilesce
- Middle Englishgentilesse
- Englishgentilesse
From Middle English gentilesse, from Old French gentilesce.
More words from Middle English, Old French
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
gentilesse. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gentilesse
“gentilesse.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gentilesse. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gentilesse,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gentilesse.
Source: gentilesse on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.