Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Incivility; rudeness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The state of being
impolite ;incivility ;rudeness .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a discourteous manner that ignores accepted social usage
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"Because it would be error; it's the worst kind of impoliteness to treat anybody that doesn't ask you to; but I've got to know every minute that her belief is a lie, and that God doesn't know anything about it."
Jewel's Story Book Clara Louise Burnham 1890
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They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly
The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain 1872
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They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly
The Innocents Abroad — Volume 05 Mark Twain 1872
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Perhaps we should open a new front on "impoliteness" and try to encircle 'em from the rear.
Think Progress 2009
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Most allegations relate to incivility, impoliteness and intolerance (32%) – essentially allegations that officers were rude and impolite.
“Two Years” for Jon Harper Killer « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009
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Most allegations relate to incivility, impoliteness and intolerance (32%) – essentially allegations that officers were rude and impolite.
“Two Years” for Jon Harper Killer « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009
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I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become "abominations," although I'm not sure recycling one's aunt will ever truly catch on.
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Most allegations relate to incivility, impoliteness and intolerance (32%) – essentially allegations that officers were rude and impolite.
“Two Years” for Jon Harper Killer « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009
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As it happened, impoliteness came naturally to Robert Byron, and he employed it frequently in his masterpiece, "The Road to Oxiana."
Five Best: Larry McMurtry Larry McMurtry 2011
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These children all live in my apartment complex, where it is safe for them to wander alone, but I'm not sure how to deal with outright insults like the messy house comment, or impoliteness like not saying thank you.
Miss Manners: Halloween's etiquette imps Post 2010
dinkum commented on the word impoliteness
WORD: impoliteness
EXAMPLE: ' The person to whom this book is dedicated, Phoebe Hurty, is no longer among the living, as they say. She was an Indianapolis widow when I met her late in the Great Depression. I was sixteen or so. She was about forty . . .
' . . . She wrote a sane and funny advice-to-the-lovelorn column for the Indianapolis Times, a good paper which is now defunct . . .
' . . . She wrote ads for the William H. Block Company, a department store which still flourishes in a building my father designed. She wrote this ad for an end-of-the-summer sale on straw hats: "For prices like this, you can run them through your horse and put them on your roses."
' . . . I became friends with her two sons, who were my age. I was over at their house all the time.
' She would talk bawdily to me and her sons, and to our girlfriends when we brought them around. She was funny. She was liberating. She taught us to be impolite in conversation not only about sexual matters, but about American history and famous heroes, about the distribution of wealth, about school, about everything.
' I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it. I keep trying to imitate the impoliteness which was so graceful in Phoebe Hurty. I think now that grace was easier for her than it is for me because of the mood of the Great Depression. She believed what so many Americans believed then: that the nation would be happy and just and rational when prosperity came.
' I never hear that word anymore: Prosperity. It used to be a synonym for Paradise. And Phoebe Hurty was able to believe that the impoliteness she recommended would give shape to an American paradise.
' Now her sort of impoliteness is fashionable. But nobody believes anymore in a new American paradise. I sure miss Phoebe Hurty. '
--- 1973. KURT VONNEGUT. Breakfast of Champions, or, Goodbye Blue Monday. Preface (Pages 1 - 2).
January 23, 2014