gentilesse
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of gentilesse
1300–50; Middle English < Middle French gentillesse, equivalent to gentil ( see genteel, gentle) + -esse noun suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s for grammatical consistency, not beauty or gentilesse, for example, that correct English has us say “It was he” instead of “It was him.”
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 3, 2014
You look like one of those Frenchified Norman gentilesse, with your smooth locks and gilded baldrick, yet your words are Norse.
From The Little Duke by Charlotte Mary Yonge
Thou hast drawn all the thread out of my shift with thy gentilesse; thou hast tickled my heart with thy rebeck.
From The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by John Payne
For thee have I my nece, of vyces clene, So fully maad thy gentilesse triste, That al shal been right as thy-selve liste.
From Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer
Emerson was very fond of the passage on "gentilesse" in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale.
From Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Edna Henry Lee Turpin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
