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What is "courtship"

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courtship
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
courtship
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
story
▪ As folklorists have observed, the courtship story tends to be a staple in any family which tells stories at all.
▪ The courtship story is the story of How the Family Began, or this branch at any rate.
▪ Even in tension-fraught marriages a courtship story can serve as a lodestar.
▪ When a courtship story goes sour or when it dies, a resource is lost.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ My parents got married after a two-week courtship.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As folklorists have observed, the courtship story tends to be a staple in any family which tells stories at all.
▪ By May and June, courtship rituals are at their peak, with three to five offspring born five weeks later.
▪ Her jagged monologue is spoken to an unseen visitor, and it tells the story of her courtship.
▪ In the end, Phillis prefers the courtship of a yeoman, Corydon.
▪ In their courtship, Joan stressed her good sense and ability to care.
▪ So my name was a kind of tribute to their courtship.
▪ Then she was kidnapped by a beetle, then by a mole, both of whom had courtship in mind.
▪ This is the objective of courtship.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Courtship

Courtship \Court"ship\ (k?rt"sh?p), n.

  1. The act of paying court, with the intent to solicit a favor.
    --Swift.

  2. The act of wooing in love; solicitation of woman to marriage.

    This method of courtship, [by which] both sides are prepared for all the matrimonial adventures that are to follow.
    --Goldsmith.

  3. Courtliness; elegance of manners; courtesy. [Obs.]

    Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.
    --Shak.

  4. Court policy; the character of a courtier; artifice of a court; court-craft; finesse. [Obs.]

    She [the Queen] being composed of courtship and Popery.
    --Fuller.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
courtship

1570s, "behavior of a courtier," from court (n.) + -ship. Meaning "paying court to a woman with intention of marriage" is from 1590s.

Wiktionary
courtship

n. 1 The act of paying court, with the intent to solicit a favor. 2 The act of wooing in love; solicitation of woman to marriage. 3 Courtliness; elegance of manners; courtesy. 4 Court policy; the character of a courtier; artifice of a court; court-craft; finesse.

WordNet
courtship

n. a man's courting of a woman; seeking the affections of a woman (usually with the hope of marriage); "its was a brief and intense courtship" [syn: wooing, courting, suit]

Wikipedia
Courtship

Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. During courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it has been perceived that it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female, thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a proposal of marriage.

Usage examples of "courtship".

A courtship ritual that I find appealing is practiced by the bowerbirds of New Guinea and Australia.

A four-year-old bull that had not yet mated with any cow left the lesser bulls with whom he had for some time been sparring and marched boldly up to the courtship couple.

Their courtship equaled or even surpassed what fabled lovers from Shaksperean, Chaucerian, and a whole host of other bygone tales had supposedly luxuriated in and was as close to an adventure in paradise as anyone could imagine.

George Denbigh was haughty, positive, and self-willed, and unless the affair could be so managed as to make him a willing assistant in the courtship, his father knew it might be abandoned at once.

When his courtship of Dolley began, he was a law student, already marked for success in his profession.

A courtship was taking place in front of her, between her little bald gynecologist and her overweight movie-star friend in the middle of the worst crisis of her life, and neither one of them cared about her.

The story mirthlessly described courtship hijinks narrated in dialect by an old-timer, and I aced it.

The jinriksha, with its human motor, must, it struck me the first time that I saw them, be a decided obstacle to courtship, for what young fellow would care to take his best girl out riding behind a horse that could understand everything that was said and done, and tell the groom all about it when he returned to the barn.

What could landlubbers ever know of the whirlwind courtships of the riverfolk, the few scattered hours together when the two ships met in port?

Don Giovanni sends the merrymakers to his palace for entertainment, cajoles and threatens Masetto into leaving him alone with Zerlina, and begins his courtship of her.

I have no doubt that his courtship was one of the chief reasons which made your daughter resolve to leave her home, for she hated him even more than she hated the fermier-general.

The friendship presently ended in courtship, and when Rembrandt pressed his suit the marriage seemed a very proper one.

His courtship, if it could be called that, had been going on since the family arrived at Beau Repos from New Orleans just after Easter.

Isaev family in Semipalatinsk and his later courtship of the widowed Marya Dmitrievna Isaev.

She had never experienced sexual pleasure other than fleetingly and tenuously in those early days of their courtship, when Julian had teased her with kisses that promised so much and yet in the end meant so very little.