CURTSEY

Curtsey

A curtsey is a traditional gesture of greeting, in which a girl or woman bends her knees while bowing her head. It is the female equivalent of male bowing in Western cultures. Miss Manners characterizes its knee bend as deriving from a "traditional gesture of an inferior to a superior." The word "curtsy" is a phonological change from "courtesy" known in linguistics as syncope.

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curtsey

Noun

  1. A small bow, generally performed by a woman or a girl, where she crosses one calf of her leg behind the other and briefly bends her knees and lowers her body in deference.
    I refused to make so much as a curtsey for the passing nobles, as I am a staunch egalitarian.

Verb

  1. To make a curtsey.
    The hotel's staff variously curtsied, nodded, and bowed to the owner as she passed.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: curtsey
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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