Gentleman [ Taste & Manners / Politics & Society ]
… the Family in England, 1680-1780 (University of California Press, 1996), p. 209. Definitions of ‘gentleman’ in Dr Samuel Johnson ’s Dictionary of the English Language , first published in 1755, captured this societal change. The leading … Definition 2 was rather more capacious: ‘A man raised above the vulgar by his character or post’. By definition 5 Johnson had almost given up: ‘It is used of any man however high’. All that was needed to be a gentleman, it seemed, was … he was knighted. 4 4 . W. Matthews, ed., The Diary of Dudley Ryder 1715-16 (London: Methuen, 1939), p. 46. Even before Johnson’s Dictionary crystallised the change in the meaning and scope of gentlemanliness there was evidence of the new …
Benevolence | Middling sort | Politeness | Rank
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