polite

Formspolites, politing, polited

1. 1
   adjective

   Showing good manners and respect in how one behaves toward others.

   The waiter stayed polite even as the customers grew impatient.

   A polite reply to the complaint arrived within the hour.

   Similarcourteous, civil, respectful, well-mannered, gracious

   Oppositerude, impolite, discourteous, disrespectful

   Note

   Behind the courtesy is a metaphor from the workshop. Latin polītus meant "polished" and shares its root with polish, so good manners were pictured as a surface worked smooth, the image kept literally in the obsolete "polished" sense. Alexander Pope's Epistle to Bathurst (1733) has a man who "bows at court, and grows polite." Both comparisons are standard: politer and politest stand alongside more polite and most polite.

2. 2
   adjectiveobsolete

   Having a smooth, polished, and burnished surface or finish.

   Note

   Here the metaphor behind the courteous meaning is still literal: a surface that has been worked smooth. Isaac Newton's Opticks (1704) has rays of light falling "on a polite surface," a mirror-like plane, not a well-mannered one. The sense is obsolete, so a modern reader will hear manners first. Outside historical writing, polished or burnished says the same thing without the confusion.

3. 3
   verbobsoletetransitive

   To polish or refine something, or to make a person more cultured and well-mannered.

   The academy sought to polite the speech and bearing of its students.

   those exercises plied, which polite men's spirits

   1691, John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.

   Note

   An obsolete verb that took a direct object, whether a surface, a manner or a person. Its forms were regular: polites, politing, polited. Because the spelling matches the adjective, old texts are easy to misread. In John Ray's The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), certain exercises "polite men's spirits." There polite is the verb and spirits is its object. The phrase does not describe courteous men.

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