What's the difference between genteel and gentle?

Genteel


Definition:

  • (a.) Possessing or exhibiting the qualities popularly regarded as belonging to high birth and breeding; free from vulgarity, or lowness of taste or behavior; adapted to a refined or cultivated taste; polite; well-bred; as, genteel company, manners, address.
  • (a.) Graceful in mien or form; elegant in appearance, dress, or manner; as, the lady has a genteel person. Law.
  • (a.) Suited to the position of lady or a gentleman; as, to live in a genteel allowance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Cleeve Hill was once the site of a 'bawdy' racecourse, before it was moved down the hill into genteel Cheltenham.
  • (2) While the opening tranche of "tales" derive from the work of forgotten contemporary humorists, the pieces of London reportage that he began to contribute to the Morning Chronicle in autumn 1834 ("Gin Shops", "Shabby-Genteel People", "The Pawnbroker's Shop") are like nothing else in pre-Victorian journalism: bantering and hard-headed by turns, hectic and profuse, falling over themselves to convey every last detail of the metropolitan front-line from which Dickens sent back his dispatches.
  • (3) An hour north of Paris in genteel Chantilly, England have prepared in unusually low-key fashion two years after a humiliating World Cup in which they were sent packing after two matches.
  • (4) Gustave's beatific smile and genteel demeanour work harmoniously with the purple hotel uniforms (Anderson does love a man in uniform).
  • (5) How popular would "Boris Island" – the mayor's fantasy airport in the Thames estuary – be in Clacton and genteel Frinton?
  • (6) From the late 1950s to the 1970s, the new, subsidised British drama was making waves at the Royal Court Theatre and in the regions - and finding critical support from commentators weary of the genteel West End theatre.
  • (7) Last week, the UK Statistics Authority gave him a reprimand that broke from the genteel language of the civil service.
  • (8) They signed Bush expressly as the first major British female exponent of this genteel genre.
  • (9) It is another to be given a genteel kicking by David Hare (who wrote in this newspaper last week that the Labour leader was worse than Neil Kinnock).
  • (10) Today Paris is still the different cities encapsulated by Hugo and Manet; Manet's chic Left Bank haunts are as fashionable and relatively genteel as 150 years ago.
  • (11) The wild, unstable undercliff on the Dorset-Devon border provided John Fowles with the perfect landscape to contrast with the genteel world of Lyme Regis in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (“In summer it is the nearest this country can offer to a tropical jungle”).
  • (12) This being a story about powerful, litigious people, it was composed in befittingly genteel terms; the pair are described as having a "friendship".
  • (13) It's a sleepy little town, beloved by genteel visitors who come for its microclimate – said to be 3C warmer than the rest of France – and exotic gardens.
  • (14) Norbert Smith: A Life was a brilliant satirical one-off on the history of British cinema through the eyes of a genteel luvvie who had seen it all, from 30s Will Hay comedies through to swinging 60s thrillers.
  • (15) There, his mother, in her mid-30s, dressed in a spotless white blouse, and with a Lady Diana-like haircut, was reading a newspaper and sipping from a genteel white teacup.
  • (16) She was born Muriel Camberg to a Jewish engineer father and an English, music-teacher mother, in the genteel Edinburgh inner suburb of Bruntsfield.
  • (17) But in the summer of 1983 this genteel corner, bypassed by shoppers and tourists, found itself a focus of national interest.
  • (18) An acrimonious divorce, scandal over a young model and nude photos at pool parties – Silvio Berlusconi's family traumas might not seem the ideal backdrop for the genteel spouses' programme at a G8 summit.
  • (19) And the genteel visitors who first inspected it had no means of knowing that even as expert an anatomist as Stubbs had got some details wrong.
  • (20) In the genteel, cultivated and fashionable crowd, Manet painted himself and his friends: the poets Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, and composer Jacques Offenbach.

Gentle


Definition:

  • (superl.) Well-born; of a good family or respectable birth, though not noble.
  • (superl.) Quiet and refined in manners; not rough, harsh, or stern; mild; meek; bland; amiable; tender; as, a gentle nature, temper, or disposition; a gentle manner; a gentle address; a gentle voice.
  • (superl.) A compellative of respect, consideration, or conciliation; as, gentle reader.
  • (superl.) Not wild, turbulent, or refractory; quiet and docile; tame; peaceable; as, a gentle horse.
  • (superl.) Soft; not violent or rough; not strong, loud, or disturbing; easy; soothing; pacific; as, a gentle touch; a gentle gallop .
  • (n.) One well born; a gentleman.
  • (n.) A trained falcon. See Falcon-gentil.
  • (n.) A dipterous larva used as fish bait.
  • (v. t.) To make genteel; to raise from the vulgar; to ennoble.
  • (v. t.) To make smooth, cozy, or agreeable.
  • (v. t.) To make kind and docile, as a horse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Put in a large bowl, add the parsley, oil and lemon juice, and gently toss.
  • (2) Differential and sucrose gradient centrifugation of honey bee thoraces, disrupted by gentle methods and using mannitol-triethanolamine-EDTA buffer at pH 6.5, showed that in the honey bee thorax 92-94.8% of the trehalase was mitochondrial.
  • (3) Despite his gentle demeanour, the 52-year-old director can be a taskmaster on set, according to colleagues.
  • (4) The response was composed of an isometric phase, during which the body weight was shifted from the stimulated limb to the opposite forelimb while the stimulated limb was gently pushed backwards, and a movement phase during which the stimulated paw actually accomplished the placing reaction.
  • (5) Maximal expiratory flow-volume (MEFV) curves similar to those obtained in most dogs and in some humans could be produced: a peak followed by a gently sloping plateau ending in a knee, where flow suddenly fell to a much smaller value approaching zero rather slowly over the last 25 to 50% of the expired vital capacity.
  • (6) Ten tissue sections from 10 examples of Bowen's disease were excised from paraffin blocks, rehydrated, and incubated in 90% formic acid at 45 degrees C for 18 h. The epidermis was gently removed with the aid of a dissecting microscope, and the remaining dermis with attached basal lamina was processed for scanning electron microscopy.
  • (7) Varying widely in size and configuration, these structures are usually somewhat ovoid but can be elongated, gently squared, or asymmetric.
  • (8) Less than 2% of humanitarian funds 'go directly to local NGOs' Read more Suggest to her that she’s too outspoken, that her approach is counterproductive and alienates those who are trying to drive change more gently, and she pauses.
  • (9) Rabbit aorta contracting substance (RCS) and prostaglandins were released from guinea-pig isolated perfused lungs by gentle massage and also by infusion of Prosparol.2.
  • (10) Endodontic procedures should be accomplished with judicious precision and gentle.
  • (11) If this coastline ever gets fully developed, I hope it happens in this direction, taking the lead from Punta del Diablo with a gentle development down, rather than large-scale and from Punta del Este upwards.
  • (12) The cell debris from the surfaces of the separated incisors was either gently wiped off with soft facial tissues or chemically removed by treating with NaOH, NaOCl or trypsin.
  • (13) Does he really think, like those daft gender essentialists, that women are innately gentle and men are big brutes out for a ruck?
  • (14) An attempt was made to isolate undegraded hyaluronan from rat skin by gentle methods giving full recovery in order to estimate the molecular weight of the polysaccharide.
  • (15) The adherent cells are easily removed by gentle pipetting; both adherent and nonadherent populations retain immunologic function.
  • (16) Ramos was beaten to it, De Gea did not move and Kalinic jumped to ease in a gentle, back-heel-style volley with the outside of his foot.
  • (17) But Nick Loening, owner of Ecoyoga in the Scottish Highlands, is evangelical about the benefits of a good soak and gently insistent that his guests make the most of the various bathing options at his retreat – regardless of the weather.
  • (18) My father, Peter Self, who was, oxymoronically, a “political scientist”, wrote numerous books, which, while often technical in character, were nonetheless informed by his own rather gentle and utopian socialism.
  • (19) When we say goodbye, Max turns in the passenger seat, and says, simply: 'Be gentle with her.'
  • (20) 5 Dollop the blackcurrant jam all over the surface of the cooked custard and spread gently to level it.