Other forms: pleased, pleasing, pleases
Please is the word you add to make a request polite. Two coffees, please. Please sit down. Could you close the door, please?
Its position is flexible — front, end, or after the verb — and the end is the commonest and safest. Leaving it out is not neutral in English; it reads as brusque, and that is worth knowing because many languages carry politeness in the verb form instead. As a verb, to please somebody is to make them happy, and if you please is a formal older version. Note pleased, which is the adjective, and please yourself, which is said with irritation and means do as you like.
1phrasepleaseAdded to a request to make it polite.
“Could I have the bill, please?”
2verbhappyTo make somebody happy or satisfied.
“It is very hard to please everybody.”
3verbchooseTo choose or want.
“Do as you please.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
please is a politeness word.
Latin placere meant to be pleasing — the same root as pleasant, placid and plea. The polite word is a shortening of if you please, which is itself a shortening of if it please you: three layers of politeness worn down to one syllable.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleHk- — pleasingness, permission
Latin
placeō — to please, to seem good
Old French
plaise
Middle English
plesen
English, today
please
From Middle English plesen, plaisen, borrowed from Old French plaise, conjugated form of plaisir or plaire, from Latin placeō (“to please, to seem good”), from the Proto-Indo-European pleHk- (“pleasingness, permission”). In this sense, displaced native līcian, whence Modern English like.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA