Gentleman
The term gentleman (from Latin gentilis, belonging to a race or gens, and man, cognate with the French word gentilhomme, the Spanish Caballero, the Italian gentil uomo or gentiluomo and the Portuguese gentil-homem), in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of the lowest rank of the English gentry, standing below an esquire and above a yeoman.
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Famous quotes containing the word gentleman:
“Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.”
—Edward Fox (b. 1934)
“Eighteen convicts being hanged in one day ... a woman was crying an account of their execution. A gentleman asked her why she said nineteen, when there had been but eighteen hanged? She replied, “Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)