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Historical Etiquette pp 143–190Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Origin of Etiquette

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Abstract

This chapter examines the origin of etiquette, vastly expanding the number of sources considered. Firstly, it investigates how etiquette is talked about in large historical corpora. After tentative explorations based on Google N-gram Viewer, various historical corpora for US and UK English, Dutch, French and Italian will help establish early occurrences of the term ‘etiquette’ and follow its use over time. Secondly, it provides lexicographic findings regarding first occurrences, the addition of extended meanings, and etymology. The combination of the two approaches produces a timeline of how the term ‘etiquette’ spreads through Western Europe. In all languages under study the earliest occurrences refer to Spanish court protocol. The chapter finds (a) that the first meaning of ‘etiquette’ is court protocol and (b) that it acquires the extended meaning of society etiquette in the middle years of the eighteenth century. The final section of the chapter sheds light on aspects that are shared between court protocol and etiquette books, taking Napoleon’s 1806 imperial etiquette as a starting point.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    She leads a rather rocambolesque life, having to flee France after being involved in a case of defamation against her husband, which costs two other men their head.

  2. 2.

    Selin adopts the past tense, but the original is written in the present and consists of an itemised list of rules.

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  1. Istituto di studi italiani, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

    Annick Paternoster

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Paternoster, A. (2022). The Origin of Etiquette. In: Historical Etiquette. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07578-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07578-0_4

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