Politeness in the context of Courteous

Etiquette (/ˈɛtikɛt, -kɪt/) can be defined as a set of norms of personal behavior in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviors that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practiced by a society, a social class, or a social group. In modern English usage, the French word étiquette (label and tag) dates from the year 1750 and also originates from the French word for "ticket," possibly symbolizing a person’s entry into society through proper behavior. There are many important historical figures that have helped to shape the meaning of the term as well as provide varying perspectives.

In linguistics, conjugation (/ˌkɒndʒʊˈɡeɪʃən/ con-juu-GAY-shən) is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb break can be conjugated to form the words break, breaks, and broke. While English has a relatively simple conjugation, other languages such as French and Arabic or Spanish are more complex, with each verb having dozens of conjugated forms. Some languages such as Georgian and Basque (some verbs only) have highly complex conjugation systems with hundreds of possible conjugations for every verb.

Verbs may inflect for grammatical categories such as person, number, gender, case, tense, aspect, mood, voice, possession, definiteness, politeness, causativity, clusivity, interrogatives, transitivity, valency, polarity, telicity, volition, mirativity, evidentiality, animacy, associativity, pluractionality, and reciprocity. Verbs may also be affected by agreement, polypersonal agreement, incorporation, noun class, noun classifiers, and verb classifiers. Agglutinative and polysynthetic languages tend to have the most complex conjugations, although some fusional languages such as Archi can also have extremely complex conjugation. Typically the principal parts are the root and/or several modifications of it (stems). All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme, and the canonical form of the verb that is conventionally used to represent that lexeme (as seen in dictionary entries) is called a lemma.

Civility may denote orderly behavior and politeness. Historically, civility also meant training in the humanities.

Courtesy (from the word courteis, from the 12th century) is gentle politeness and courtly manners. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the behaviour expected of the nobility was compiled in courtesy books.

In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence. This generally includes only those aspects of information that "respond to the temporary state of the addressee's mind", and excludes other aspects of linguistic information such as references to background (encyclopedic/common) knowledge, choice of style, politeness, and so forth. For example, the difference between an active clause (e.g., the police want him) and a corresponding passive (e.g., he is wanted by police) is a syntactic difference, but one motivated by information structuring considerations. Other choices motivated by information structure include preposing (e.g., that one I don't like) and inversion (e.g., "the end", said the man).

The basic notions of information structure are focus, givenness, and topic, as well as their complementary notions of background, newness, and comment respectively. Focus "indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expressions", givenness indicates that "the denotation of an expression is present" in the immediate context of the utterance, and topic is "the entity that a speaker identifies, about which then information, the comment, is given". Additional notions in information structure may include contrast and exhaustivity, but there is no general agreement in the linguistic literature about extensions of the basic three notions. There are many different approaches, such as cognitive, generative or functional architectures, to information structure. The concept has also been used in studies measuring information density in cognitive linguistics.

Lady is a term for a woman who behaves in a polite way. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the female counterpart of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men.

"Lady" is also a formal title in the United Kingdom. "Lady" is used before the family name or peerage of a woman with a title of nobility or honorary title suo jure (in her own right), such as female members of the Order of the Garter and Order of the Thistle, or the wife of a lord, a baronet, Scottish feudal baron, laird, or a knight, and also before the first name of the daughter of a duke, marquess, or earl.

Etiquette (/ˈɛtikɛt, -kɪt/) can be defined as a set of norms of personal behavior in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviors that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practiced by a society, a social class, or a social group. In modern English usage, the French word étiquette (label and tag) dates from the year 1750 and also originates from the French word for "ticket," possibly symbolizing a person's entry into society through proper behavior. There are many important historical figures that have helped to shape the meaning of the term as well as provide varying perspectives.

Blackballing is a rejection in a traditional form of secret ballot, where a white ball or ballot constitutes a vote in support and a black ball signifies opposition. The system is commonly used where an organization's rules provide that one or two objections, rather than a percentage of the vote (for example, more than 50%), are sufficient to defeat a proposition. Since the seventeenth century, these rules have commonly applied to elections to membership of many gentlemen's clubs and similar institutions such as Masonic lodges and fraternities.

The principle of such election rules in a club is that it tends to preserve the current ethos of the club by ensuring that candidates are congenial to (almost) all the existing members. As a public difference of opinions could be divisive, the election is secret.

Boldness is the opposite of shyness. To be bold implies a willingness to get things done despite risks.

For example, in the context of sociability, a bold person may be willing to risk shame or rejection in social situations, or to bend rules of etiquette or politeness. An excessively bold person could aggressively ask for money, or persistently push someone to fulfill a request.

Rudeness (also called effrontery) is a display of actual or perceived disrespect by not complying with the social norms or etiquette expected within a relationship, social group, or culture. Social norms are established as the essential guidelines of normally accepted behavior within a given context, and individuals often establish personal boundaries to meet their own needs and desires within smaller settings, such as friendships. To be unwilling to align one's behavior with these norms known to the general population of what is socially acceptable is to be rude. These norms may resemble a sort of "unspoken law", with social repercussions or rewards for violators or advocates, respectively.

Rudeness, "constituted by deviation from whatever counts as politic in a given social context, is inherently confrontational and disruptive to social equilibrium". Forms of rudeness include behaving in ways that are inconsiderate, insensitive, deliberately offensive, impolite, obscene, or that violate taboos. In some cases, an act of rudeness can go so far as to be a crime (e.g., the crime of hate speech). In many cultures, joking can create a context where rudeness is temporarily excused or indulged for the purpose of making people laugh.

Small talk is an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed. In essence, it is polite and standard conversation about unimportant things.

The phenomenon of small talk was initially studied in 1923 by Bronisław Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages", who coined the term "phatic communication" to describe it. The ability to conduct small talk is a social skill.

Please is a word used in the English language to indicate politeness and respect while making a request. Derived from shortening the phrase "if you please" or "if it please(s) you", the term has taken on substantial nuance based on its intonation and the relationship between the persons between whom it is used. In much of the Western world, use of the word is considered proper etiquette, and parents and authority figures often imprint upon children the importance of saying "please" when asking for something from an early age, leading to the description of the term as "the magic word".