gentility means the state of being elegant, genteel, having good breeding, or being socially superior. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 75 out of 100.
Why this word is great
GENTILITY — [Noun] The quality of being genteel, marked by refined manners and social superiority, or the class of people possessing this quality. From Middle English, from Old French gentilité, from Latin gentīlitās ("membership of a gens or clan, relationship"), from gentīlis ("of or belonging to a gens"), from gens ("clan, nation"). Unlike "courtesy," a democratic currency of polite conduct, or "refinement," a quality that can be purchased and practiced, gentility is a social alchemy, blending conduct with inherited caste. It is the unyielding starch of an old linen napkin, the precise, unsmiling angle of a head in a portrait, and the specific warmth of silver polished by generations of hands—a quiet theater of superiority where the stage is blood, sustained long after the audience has departed.
noun
- The state of being elegant, genteel, having good breeding, or being socially superior.“1967-1969, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
He is the violence and fear of the boy of my stories, yet the gentility and sensitivity of poetry.”
- The upper classes, the gentry.