Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having the qualities of gallantry and honor attributed to an ideal knight.
  • adjective Of or relating to chivalry.
  • adjective Characterized by consideration and courtesy, especially toward women.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to chivalry or knight-errantry.
  • Having the high qualities characteristic or supposed to be characteristic of chivalry; having or exhibiting high courages; knightly; gallant, magnanimous, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Pertaining to chivalry or knight-errantry; warlike; heroic; gallant; high-spirited; high-minded; magnanimous.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of a man honourable, especially to women.
  • adjective involving chivalry

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective being attentive to women like an ideal knight

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English from the Old French chevalerous; see chivalry

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Examples

  • Louis Mountbatten, the Commander, ordered the enemy crew, who had all safely abandoned ship, to be brought on board in chivalrous recognition of their treatment of the foundered Greeks.

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  • Are the odds so impossibly great that Ashley Todd just randomly played the card that got countless Black men lynched across this country on many times the mere word of a complainant, or ... the perception of someone standing in chivalrous stead for a complainant?

    Miss Ashley and Her Chifferobe...Busted. 2008

  • Are the odds so impossibly great that Ashley Todd just randomly played the card that got countless Black men lynched across this country on many times the mere word of a complainant, or ... the perception of someone standing in chivalrous stead for a complainant?

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  • A favourite theme with the company was the want of soldiers or generals at the North, and the impossibility that a set of mechanics and tradesmen, who knew only how to make money and keep it, should be able in chivalrous and gentlemanly exercises to cope with the Southern cavaliers, who were accustomed to sword and pistol and the use of them from their youth up.

    Daisy in the Field 1869

  • Bena, being "chivalrous" -- ass-kissing, actually -- started in about how I shouldn't be acting "like this" and cursing in front of a "woman."

    Thomas Paine's Corner 2009

  • It has come to such a pass in this so-called chivalrous country that sensitive women will submit to almost any wrong rather than seek redress in our courts of law, where they are liable to be subjected to studied insult by unconscionable shysters.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 1905

  • Anybody could see what was obligatory on the representative of Arthur; he was bound to be chivalrous, that is, to be European.

    The Crimes of England 1905

  • He is showy in appearance, brave, daring, attentive to females, and, above all, chivalrous, that is, inclined to show disinterested courtesy to the weaker sex, as we have just seen.

    Primitive Love and Love-Stories Henry Theophilus Finck 1890

  • He saw his way to do noble service in the cause of womanhood, and that by following the path of mere common sense -- all sentimental and so-called chivalrous humbug cast aside, all exaggerated new conceptions simply disregarded.

    Our Friend the Charlatan George Gissing 1880

  • Susanna now again belonged to me in another, truer, and more real way than I had ever dreamt of or suspected, as I comprehended that everything that could be called chivalrous sacrifice on my side only lay lower than our love, was even simply an unworthy offence to it.

    The Visionary Pictures From Nordland Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie 1870

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