Courtship is the time of trying to win somebody's love. A long courtship, during their courtship, courtship rituals.
The word is dated for people and entirely current for animals, where courtship display is the technical term for everything from birdsong to dancing. In business it means the wooing before a merger. The court in it is the royal one, where the manners came from.
1nouncourtshipThe time of trying to win somebody's love.
“After a long courtship of letters and visits, they finally married.”
courtship is a period of wooing.
Court plus -ship. To court somebody came from the behaviour of a royal court, where such attentions were formalised.
From court + ship.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA