Gentle means soft and careful in the way you touch, move or speak. A gentle touch, a gentle voice, be gentle with it.
It applies to people, to actions and to things: a gentle slope, a gentle breeze, gentle heat. What unites them is the absence of force. Of a person it suggests kindness as well as care — a gentle man, in two words, which is not the same as a gentleman. Note gently, the adverb, and that gentle originally meant well-born, a sense that survives in gentry, genteel and the phrase of gentle birth.
1adjectivegentleSoft and careful in touch, movement or speech.
“Be gentle with it, the hinge is loose.”
2adjectivesteepNot steep or strong.
“It is a gentle slope for the first mile.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
gentle is a quality of softness.
Latin gentilis meant of the same family or clan, from gens, a family. It became noble in French, and English took it as gentle, meaning high-born — the softness came later, from the manners expected of that class. Gentle, genteel and jaunty are all the same French word borrowed three times.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Latin
gentilis — of the same family or clan
Old French
gentil — high-born, noble
Middle English
gentil — courteous, noble
English, today
gentle
Built from
From Middle English gentil (“courteous, noble”), from Old French gentil (“high-born, noble”), from Latin gentilis (“of the same family or clan”), from gens (“[Roman] clan”). a doublet of gentile and genteel and jaunty.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA