POLITE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Polite

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/pəlˈaɪt/ Listen

adjective

Polite adj. (compar. politer; superl. politest)

Smooth; polished. (Obs.) "Rays of light falling on a polite surface."

Smooth and refined in behavior or manners; well bred; courteous; complaisant; obliging; civil. "He marries, bows at court, and grows polite."

Characterized by refinement, or a high degree of finish; as, polite literature.

Synonyms: Polished; refined; well bred; courteous; affable; urbane; civil; courtly; elegant; genteel.

verb

Polite v. t. To polish; to refine; to render polite. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Polite'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Polite" Quotes from Famous Books

... his seat and his habitual polite air and voice, "serve out a barrel of Bordeaux and a beaker of old Antigua rum to the 'Centipede's' crew to drink my health; and I say, my beauty! have a pig or two killed; tell the boatswain to haul the ...

— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... polite society to be lookin' gift horses in the mouth," said Katy proudly. "HOW I got it is me own affair, jist like ye got any gifts ye was ever makin' me, is yours. WHERE I got it? I went into the city on the strafe car and I went to the biggest store in the city and I got in the elevator and I says ...

— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... can't shake hands with you," said Nell, "It isn't thought polite, Without an introduction; Besides, no doubt it's spite, It mayn't be true, but still they do, They ...

— Christmas Roses • Lizzie Lawson

... and of low origin, Jacques Lefevre by name, born at Etaples in Picardy, had for seventeen years filled with great success a professorship in the university. "Amongst many thousands of men," said Erasmus, "you will not find any of higher integrity and more versed in polite letters." "He is very fond of me," wrote Zwingle about him; "he is perfectly open and good; he argues, he sings, he plays, and be laughs with me at the follies of the world." Some circumstance or other brought the young student and the old scholar together; ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... characteristic of the Occident is a feature of its individualism, that could not come into being in a feudal civilization in which every respectable man carried two swords with which to take instant vengeance on whoever should malign or doubt him. Universal secretiveness and conventionality, polite forms and veiled expressions, were the necessary shields of a military feudalism. Both the social order and the language were fitted to develop to a high degree the power of attention to minutest details of manner and speech and of inferring important matters from slight ...

— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

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