Originally posted February 21, 2006

From time to time on the radio I hear some investigating officer in a news clip talking about a crime suspect and calling him a gentleman.

Seems to me the guy they’re holding on suspicion of assault, or worse, is anything but a gentleman.

Now you might think that the word “gentleman” evolved referring to men who were gentle, meaning not rough or violent.  Let’s examine that idea.

The word “gentleman” is pretty old; I see the first citation here is coming up on 800 years ago.  You’d think “gentle” would be even older, but in fact both words came into English from French after William the Conqueror, and looking here in my Petit Robert it looks like the words don’t trace much further back in French either.

But all sources do point to Latin roots.  Back there in Latin the word meant “family” and is related to our English words “genitals” with which we produce families, and “generation”, the parents, children and grandchildren within families.

Even the word “gentile” is related, being those families of peoples not Jewish.

The sense as the word “gentle” came into French and English is also along the lines of a “good family.”  That is, being high-born and noble.

So a “gentleman” was a “nobleman” and then, just as now, “old money” was seen as being more understated.  So in English the word “gentle” began to mean more reserved; calmer.  This was already the case by Shakespeare’s time, and he used the word in both senses.

In The Merchant of Venice he writes

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

While in Henry V in that stirring call to arms

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day

Here “shall gentle his condition” means fight with me and you’ll be a nobleman.

In French the word changed meaning in parallel with its changes in English and then was re-imported into English as “genteel” with a meaning of “elegant.”

A gentleman farmer is the guy who owns the place but doesn’t actually have to pull on his coveralls.  This sense extended to give “gentleman” the meaning of a person who doesn’t actually have a job—mostly because he doesn’t have to.

When the cop refers to the guy in handcuffs as a gentleman, however, it isn’t because the guy is unemployed.

It’s likely more along the lines that police procedure dictates you shouldn’t refer to a suspect as a “thieving crooked liar”, as that may be seen as prejudicing the case.