Definitions

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

  • noun The quality or state of being ladylike.

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

  • noun Ladylike behaviour.

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

  • noun behavior befitting a lady

Etymologies

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Examples

  • If women behaved with more modesty and more ladylikeness, men would behave less boorishly.

    The sleazy sexism that's served up... Ann Althouse 2007

  • If women behaved with more modesty and more ladylikeness, men would behave less boorishly.

    The sleazy sexism that's served up... Ann Althouse 2007

  • "If women behaved with more modesty and more ladylikeness, men would behave less boorishly."

    The sleazy sexism that's served up... Ann Althouse 2007

  • His wife is a delicate little beauty, the very flower and perfume of ladylikeness, who simply adores him—but this leaves no word to describe his love for her.40

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • His wife is a delicate little beauty, the very flower and perfume of ladylikeness, who simply adores him—but this leaves no word to describe his love for her.40

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • Joy, she probably thinks your coloring too vivid for ladylikeness.

    The Wishing-Ring Man Margaret Widdemer 1931

  • I'm not given to taking conventional views of things and I'm the last woman in Ireland to want to make girls conform to the standard of what's called ladylikeness.

    Lalage's Lovers George A. Birmingham 1907

  • Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long preoccupied with its own troubles; he recalled with a tender remorse the old Venetian days and the kindliness of the gracious, silly woman who had seemed to like him so much; he remembered the charm of her perfect ladylikeness, and of her winning, weak-headed desire to make every one happy to whom she spoke; the beauty of the good-will, the hospitable soul that in an imaginably better world than this will outvalue a merely intellectual or aesthetic life.

    A Foregone Conclusion William Dean Howells 1878

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