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courtly

UK/ˈkɔːtli/US/ˈkɔɹtli/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,022 of 15,258leans written

Courtly means polished and dignified, as at a royal court. Courtly manners, a courtly bow, courtly love.

Courtly love is the medieval literary code of devotion to an unattainable lady, and it shaped European ideas of romance for centuries. Applied to a person now it means formally polite in a slightly old-fashioned way, and it is usually a compliment.

Dave994 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of courtly

  1. 1adjectivecourtlyPolished and dignified, as at a royal court.C1

    “He greeted her with a courtly bow and kissed her hand.”

courtly is a quality.

Where it comes from

Court plus -ly. Court comes from Latin cohors, an enclosed yard or a retinue.

  1. Middle English

    courtly

  2. English, today

    courtly

From Middle English courtly, equivalent to court + ly.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

courtly in the wild

  • The concept also intersects with the tradition of courtly love, in which the beloved woman was elevated to a near-sacred status.

    Princesse lointaine

  • Raimon was admired by contemporaries and by most poets of later generations and he is famous for his handling of the subject of courtly love.

    Raimon de Miraval

  • However, unlike courtly productions, the Davari Shahnameh was not a commissioned work.

    Davari Shahnameh

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.

Related words

  • court
  • courtier
  • courteous