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Examples
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In mixed companies with your equals (for in mixed companies all people are to a certain degree equal), greater ease and liberty are allowed; but they too have their bounds within 'bienseance'.
Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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There is a 'bienseance' also with regard to people of the lowest degree:
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1751 Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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There is a 'bienseance' also with regard to people of the lowest degree:
Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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In mixed companies with your equals (for in mixed companies all people are to a certain degree equal), greater ease and liberty are allowed; but they too have their bounds within 'bienseance'.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1751 Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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To women you should always address yourself with great outward respect and attention, whatever you feel inwardly; their sex is by long prescription entitled to it; and it is among the duties of 'bienseance'; at the same time that respect is very properly and very agreeably mixed with a degree of 'enjouement', if you have it; but then, that badinage must either directly or indirectly tend to their praise, and even not be liable to a malicious construction to their disadvantage.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1751 Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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To women you should always address yourself with great outward respect and attention, whatever you feel inwardly; their sex is by long prescription entitled to it; and it is among the duties of 'bienseance'; at the same time that respect is very properly and very agreeably mixed with a degree of 'enjouement', if you have it; but then, that badinage must either directly or indirectly tend to their praise, and even not be liable to a malicious construction to their disadvantage.
Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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There is a bienseance also with regard to people of the lowest degree: a gentleman observes it with his footman — even with the beggar in the street.
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005
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In mixed companies with your equals (for in mixed companies all people are to a certain degree equal), greater ease and liberty are allowed; but they too have their bounds within bienseance.
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005
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Be that as it will, he is a personage of a very portly appearance, and is quite master of the bienseance.
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Consideréz l'incapacité de L'Etat de Berne qui pour n'avoir pas des forces maritimes ne Scauroit Soutenir un Pays si eloigné 6. ce Pays est desia marqué par les deux Puissances L'Espagne et la France, La premiere possedant les Pays delà de la Riviere contre le Mexique, La Seconde ce qui est de ça la Riviere le prenant pour une dependance ou plutost une bienseance
Gammerstang commented on the word bienseance
(noun) - Decorum; propriety. Rather common in English use about the end of the 18th and beginning of 19th centuries. From French bien, well, and séant, past participle of French seoir, to befit . . . Etiquettical, pertaining to etiquette.
--Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
January 14, 2018