gentle

英文词源

gentle

gentle: [13] Expressions like ‘of gentle birth’, and related forms such as gentility [14] and gentleman [13] point up the original link between gentle and ‘family, stock, birth’. The word comes via Old French gentil from Latin gentīlis, a derivative of gēns ‘family, stock’, which in turn goes back to the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene, generate, genitive, etc).

To begin with it meant ‘of the same family’, but by post-classical times it had shifted to ‘of good family’, the sense in which English originally acquired it. Like the closely related generous, it then moved on semantically from ‘well-born’ to ‘having a noble character, generous, courteous’, but interestingly this sense has virtually died out in English (except in such fixed phrases as gentle knight and gentle reader), having been replaced since the 16th century by ‘mild, tender’.

French gentil was reborrowed into English in the 16th century as genteel, in which again connotations of good breeding figure highly. Attempts at a French accent resulted ultimately in jaunty [17], which originally meant ‘wellbred’ or ‘elegant’. The other English descendant of Latin gentīlis is the directly borrowed gentile [14], whose application to ‘non-Jewish people’ comes from its use in the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible.
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gentle (adj.)

early 13c., gentile, gentle "well-born, of noble rank or family," from Old French gentil/jentil "high-born, worthy, noble, of good family; courageous, valiant; fine, good, fair" (11c., in Modern French "nice, graceful, pleasing; fine, pretty") and directly from Latin gentilis "of the same family or clan," in Medieval Latin "of noble or good birth," from gens (genitive gentis) "race, clan," from root of gignere "beget," from PIE root *gene- "to give birth, beget" (see genus).

Sense evolved in English and French to "having the character or manners of one of noble rank or birth," varying according to how those were defined. From mid-13c. in English as "gracious, kind" (now obsolete), manners prescribed for Christian or chivalrous nobility. From late 13c. as "courteous, polite, well-bred, charming;" c. 1300 as "graceful, beautiful." Meaning "mild, tender; easy; not harsh" (of animals, things, persons) is from 1550s. Older sense remains in gentleman, and compare gentile (adj.), an alternative form which tends to keep the Biblical senses of the Latin word (though gentle in Middle English sometimes meant "pagan, heathen"), and genteel, which is the same word borrowed again from French. From 1823 as "pertaining to the fairies."