gentlehood en · NOUN
Etymology
From gentle + -hood.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The state of being of good or gentle birth; good breeding.
When we allowed gentlehood to be destroyed, gentle manners, honour, dignity, and such old virtues went too.
1888, Walter Besant, “The Council in the House”, in The Inner House, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 141:There was yet within him the means of repentance, could a locus penitentiæ^([sic]) have been supplied to him. He grieved bitterly over his own ill doings, and knew well what changes gentlehood would have demanded from him.
1860 January – 1861 April, Anthony Trollope, “The Philistines at the Parsonage”, in Framley Parsonage. […] (Collection of British Authors; 551), copyright edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published April 1861, →OCLC, page 250: