gentil

Forms

gentil (feminine gentile)^[1]

• jantil, gentill, genteil, gentiel, gentis, gentix, gentiz, gantis^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

The nominative singular and oblique plural are gentis, gentiz or gentix;^[3][6] Foerster's Chrétien glossary heads the word jantil.^[3][6]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin gentīlis (“belonging to the same clan”),^[1][7] which is formed from gēns (“clan, tribe”) and -īlis.^[1][8] The DHLF dates the borrowing to about 1050;^[7] Bloch and Wartburg give the Latin word as its source and call its palatal ⟨l⟩ analogical.^[9] It has the cognates Old Occitan gentil and Italian gentile.^[10][11]

The sense moved from “of a lineage” to “of good birth”, as with gent.^[9] Gamillscheg explains it by the medieval view that only the nobility had a lineage, and compares Old High German adal (“lineage”), the source of German Adel (“nobility”).^[12] Medieval Latin gentilis also meant “noble”.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record the OGR corpus gives is the form sintil in two stanzas of a French love song of the last third of the 11th century.^[14][15] The Vie de saint Alexis, about 1090, has gentils “noble by birth”.^[16][17][18]

Semantic evolution

In the oldest texts the word means both noble by birth and noble of heart, brave, and like gent it first referred to warrior values; the gentil hom is recorded from about 1150.^[7] Chrétien de Troyes uses it for birth and for quality alike: in Erec et Enide Et mout gentix dame est sa mere “and her mother is a lady of very noble birth”.^[3] It also described a hawk of the best breed, food and fragrance of fine quality, and a tame animal.^[17][19][2]

Bloch and Wartburg date the modern senses “gracious, pretty, kind” to about the 17th century; the old sense survives only in set phrases and in French gentilhomme.^[9] The noun French gentil “pagan”, from 1488, is a separate borrowing from Church Latin gentiles.^[20][9] English took gentle from the Old French word in the early 13th century.^[21]

Timeline

• 1066–1100 – sintil in two stanzas of a French love song.^[14][15]
• c. 1090 – gentils in the Vie de saint Alexis.^[16][22][18]
• c. 1100 – gentilz and gentill in the Chanson de Roland.^[23]
• 1121–1135 – the first record in the AND.^[2]
• c. 1170 – gentil and gentix in Chrétien's Erec et Enide.^[3][24]
• 1175–1200 – gantis in Garin le Loherain.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. noble by birth, well-born.^[3][2][17]
2. noble in character; valiant, generous.^[25][2]
3. courteous, kind.^[2][1]
4. beautiful, shapely.^[2]
5. (of things, food or fragrance) fine, excellent, delicate.^[2][17]
6. (of a hawk) of the best breed;^[17][19][2] (of animals) tame.^[17][19][2]
7. (Anglo-Norman) gentile, pagan.^[2]

Noun

1. a nobleman.^[2]

Anglo-Norman

The AND first cites the word from 1121–1135, with spellings such as genteil, gentiel, gentile and gentys.^[2] Beside the senses of birth and character it records “wealthy”, “Gentile, pagan” and, as a noun, “nobleman”, “Gentile” and “peregrine falcon”.^[2] The compound gentilfemme “lady, gentlewoman” is recorded from the end of the 12th century.^[26] English gentle comes from the Old French word and directly from Latin.^[21]

Word family

• gentilfemme

Descendants

• French gentil^[1][20]
• Middle English gentil (borrowed; → English gentle)^[21][2]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch, the DEAF, the AND and the DÉCT head the word gentil;^{[17][27][2][3]} the DMF and the TLFi separate the adjective from the noun “pagan”.^[28][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. gentil
3. ^ a b c d e f g Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. gentil
4. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
5. ^ a b Camps, Jean-Baptiste, et al., Geste: a lemmatised corpus of Old French chansons de geste, github (texts by DEAF siglum), p. GarLorrI
6. ^ a b Foerster, Wendelin; Breuer, Hermann (1914), Kristian von Troyes: Wörterbuch zu seinen sämtlichen Werken, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 163
7. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. gentil
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. gentīlis
9. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 332
10. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 4:110
11. ^ Bos, Alphonse (1891), Glossaire de la langue d'oïl (XIe–XIVe siècles), Paris: Maisonneuve, p. 283
12. ^ Gamillscheg, Ernst (1926–1928), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, Heidelberg: Winter, p. 498
13. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. gentilis
14. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas (2025), Old Gallo-Romance Corpus, github (the earliest Gallo-Romance texts, lemmatised; texts by siglum), p. ChansLasB
15. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. ChansLasB
16. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas, CorMétAF: lemmatised extracts of Old and Middle French verse and prose (990–1500), github (texts by siglum), p. AlexisS2
17. ^ a b c d e f g Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 4:271
18. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. AlexisP
19. ^ a b c Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 9:694
20. ^ a b c Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
21. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
22. ^ UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. AlexisZ
23. ^ Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
24. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. ErecF
25. ^ Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. gentil
26. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. gentilfemme
27. ^ Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. gentil
28. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. gentil