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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
gentility
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Beaufort, an old Southern town, is a picture of gentility.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Generally speaking, though, suburban gentility has seeped across the map.
▪ His relentless gentility would risk serious tedium without a sharpness of eye and wit.
▪ In the light of that brutality I don't think we need concern ourselves about gentility, spurious or otherwise.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gentility

Gentility \Gen*til"i*ty\, n. [L. gentilitas the relationship of those who belong to the same clan, also, heathenism: cf. F. gentilit['e] heathenism. See Gentile.]

  1. Good extraction; dignity of birth.
    --Macaulay.

    He . . . mines my gentility with my education.
    --Shak.

  2. The quality or qualities appropriate to those who are well born, as self-respect, dignity, courage, courtesy, politeness of manner, a graceful and easy mien and behavior, etc.; good breeding.

  3. The class in society who are, or are expected to be, genteel; the gentry. [R.]
    --Sir J. Davies.

  4. Paganism; heathenism. [Obs.]
    --Hooker.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gentility

mid-14c., "gentle birth," from Old French gentilité (14c.) or directly from Latin gentilitatem (nominative gentilitas) "relationship in the same family or clan," from gentilis (see gentle). Meaning "state of being gentile" is from 1520s.

Wiktionary
gentility

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The state of being elegant, genteel, having good breeding, or being socially superior. 2 The upper classes, the gentry.

WordNet
gentility

n. elegance by virtue of fineness of manner and expression [syn: breeding, genteelness]

Usage examples of "gentility".

The Brummagem sing-song inlaid with suburban gentility scraped my nerves.

Are you going to sit there all night and cornhole me with this Southern gentility nonsense or are you going to get to the point?

Madam, in your letter, the simple, flowing style of gentility, the one which alone a woman of condition who writes to her friend may use with dignity.

This was a parlor: overstuffed plush chairs, faded rug with pink roses, a million little tables densely covered with picture frames and wooden boxes and seashells and candleholders and dried flowers in small vases the dim colors of Victorian gentility.

I have found, Madam, in your letter, the simple, flowing style of gentility, the one which alone a woman of condition who writes to her friend may use with dignity.

If she were living free and independent in Paris she might find out the truth about the real state of his affairs, and then good-bye to Buisson-Souef and landed gentility!

And expensive tea is a very favourite luxury with well-to-do tradespeople and rich farmers’ wives, who turn up their noses at the Congou and Souchong prevalent at many tables of gentility, and will have nothing else than Gunpowder and Pekoe for themselves.

He knows that any trace of gentility or articulateness would destroy the integrity of his style.

She showed him that with age is discretion, with ugliness security from rivals, and that all true gentility depends, not upon the accident of birth, but upon the character of the individual.

Meekin, despite the halo of sanctity which he felt should surround him, found his gentility melt all of a sudden.

But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.

Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood – from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe – from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away.

Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities were before her.

No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punches, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility.

As Thomas Gilmartin had said of his father, this boy has something of the nature of a herald, and the pomp and splendour of county gentility feeds his imagination and rouses his ambition.