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What is "well-behaved"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
well-behaved
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
well-behaved/badly-behaved
▪ a badly-behaved class
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Can I bring my dog? She's very well-behaved.
▪ She was a thoughtful, kind, and well-behaved girl.
▪ Their children are so well-behaved it seems almost unnatural.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A petty officer, his wife and three incredibly well-behaved children were first.
▪ An ugly duckling, like a printing press, was transformed into a well-behaved goose laying golden eggs.
▪ Flavia responded like a well-behaved little girl.
▪ His sad, excruciatingly well-behaved adolescence is inextricable from the progress of a doomed friendship with an eccentric schoolmate, Smallgods.
▪ Most of the 20,000 asteroids in our data banks remain on well-behaved paths, for ever circuiting the sun in the main belt.
▪ Small towns and highways sit in the distance like the proverbial well-behaved child -- seen, vaguely, but not heard.
▪ So we were exceedingly well-behaved towards each other.
▪ The hangar-sized concert room was packed with a well-behaved male dominated audience.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
well-behaved

1590s, from well (adv.) + past participle of behave (v.).

Wiktionary
well-behaved

a. 1 (context of a person or animal English) Having good manners and acting properly; conforming to standards of good behaviour; 2 (context mathematics English) Having intuitive, easy to handle property, especially: having a finite derivative of all orders at all points, and having no discontinuities.

WordNet
well-behaved

adj. (usually of children) someone who behaves in a manner that the speaker believes is correct; "a well-behaved child" [syn: well behaved]

Usage examples of "well-behaved".

We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation.

I believe Arabella to be a well-behaved girl enough, but she is very young, after all, and I have thought sometimes that her spirits might, lacking wiser guidance, betray her into unbecoming conduct.

Once the first shock of occupation had settled down, Tom Kirkman had come out to The Forks, to assure them that the soldiers were reasonably well-behaved and looking for provisions.

It was not long before the latter had made the long-wished-for acquaintance of little Snowflake, the lively Greenfinch, and the well-behaved goats belonging to grandfather, as well as of the many others, including the Grand Turk.

He was a plain decent well-behaved man, and expressed his gratitude to Dr. Johnson for having once got him permission from Dr.

Benjamin Bathurst, who, until now, was well-behaved and seemed to take his confinement philosophically, should suddenly make this rash and fatal attempt, unless it was because of those infernal dunderheads of madhouse doctors who have been bothering him.

The house retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as orderly and well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish to sit under of a pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their immemorial revelation and the distant whippoorwill signifies his notion of what ought to be done about it.

Not only was the demure, well-behaved bluestocking Claudia immediately hailed as the Angel, but Augusta herself had proved just as successful.

When I think of a perfectly good, well-behaved ship consorting with ribald, rowdy actors .

She had been a scarifyingly well-behaved little girl for almost two years after that incident.

A few well-behaved children at window seats craned their necks to see out, pointed, and asked questions in incomprehensible dialect.