chivalrous

UK/ˈʃɪv.əl.ɹəs/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,540 of 15,258leans spoken

Chivalrous means courteous and protective in an old-fashioned way. A chivalrous gesture, chivalrous behaviour, less than chivalrous.

The code it comes from was for knights and included courage and loyalty as much as courtesy. In modern use it usually means a man being protective towards a woman, and it divides opinion for exactly that reason. The word comes from the French for a horseman.

Definitions of chivalrous

1adjectivechivalrousCourteous and protective in an old-fashioned way.C1
“In a chivalrous gesture, he laid his coat over the puddle so she could step across.”

chivalrous is a quality.

Where it comes from

Old French chevalerous comes from chevalier, a knight, from cheval, a horse.

Old French
chevalerous
Middle English
chivalerous
English, today
chivalrous

From Middle English chivalerous, from Old French chevalerous; see chivalry.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

chivalrous in the wild

Richard Burton, in his 1856 book First Footsteps in East Africa, called Gama "the most chivalrous soldier of a chivalrous age".
Cristóvão da Gama
Morris considered his fantasies a revival of the medieval tradition of chivalrous romances, and was accordingly willing to use archaic-sounding language.
The Sundering Flood
Although not awarded by the government of the Netherlands, it is considered by the government as a recognized chivalrous order.
Order of the Golden Ark
The Hamasah is a genre of Arabic poetry that "recounts chivalrous exploits in the context of military glories and victories".
Hamasah

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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