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Get Fancy With Genteel
The word genteel has some familiar English relatives, including gentle, gentrify, and gentility. All come from the Latin noun gens, used to refer to a group of related people. That word's plural, gentes, was used in Roman times to classify the people of the world, particularly non-Romans. Similarly, the English gentile refers to people who are not Jewish, or who don’t follow other specific religions. Many non-English words come from gens as well, including the Spanish gente, meaning “people.” To say gens has made its mark would be putting it gently.
Examples of genteel in a Sentence
Lovia Gyarkye, HollywoodReporter, 20 June 2025
Even much of the criticism of Musk was relatively genteel.
—Jake Lahut, Wired News, 6 June 2025
Irving Thalberg, born in 1899, grew up in the genteel Brooklyn of German-Jewish doctors and rabbis, a world apart from Mayer’s rougher caste of Eastern European Jews hustling for scrap metal in cold maritime Canada.
—Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 9 June 2025
In its early days, it was reviled by some critics as a jarring intrusion on the genteel Georgian symmetry of the square.
—Mark Landler, New York Times, 7 June 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Genteel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genteel. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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genteel
adjective
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