On Being Polite
And what about “polite”? We think of the word today as meaning, more or less, mannerly. A polite person is somebody with manners; somebody who has the kindness to say please and thank you. But in origin the word is closer to polish, with the sense that the polite person is a sort of gleaming silver teapot. From its Latin roots (politus, the past participle of polire, to smooth or polish) through its emergence in Middle English and well into the 1700s, the word meant a thing buffed up or cleansed or even organized, although other meanings also emerged. So it always is with important words.
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