polite

"Where there is more of a grey area is with coughs and colds. Since Covid, workplace etiquette has changed - generally it's considered polite to work from home."

From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026

A couple years before Pinterest delivered this revelation to me, chef Roy Choi gave me another version of the same permission — only a little less polite.

From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2026

Over the coming days, Monk kept chatting with James, whose polite Southern drawl and professional concern inspired trust.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

Are we all going to have the same dolphin-smooth faces soon, with filler and face-lifts simply the price of admission for participating in polite society?

From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2026

"Well," said Sam, looking back at the playground as they went through the door, "I might go down the giraffe slide just one time to be polite."

From "All About Sam" by Lois Lowry

An 18-year-old woman said ghosting was “a little bit politer way to reject someone than to directly say, ‘I do not want to chat with you.’

From Washington Post ● Jul. 25, 2022

She makes unreasonable public demands, he apologizes for her, and then he not-so-subtly reiterates those demands in a slightly politer tone.

From Slate ● May 9, 2019

They wield illusory credits and debits, pecuniary symbols of wealth, all the better to club their opponents into a politer businesslike submission.

From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2019

She admires various classical and modern dancers and choreographers and works, but her own dancers enact a brash and pitiless system of movement that disdains and subverts politer forms.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 22, 2015

“I’d be politer, if I was you, to the man with the glamry blade.”

From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell

The 20-year-old said she had only positive interactions with some of the men who live at the hotel, who she describes as "the politest people".

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2025

“The politest way is to enlist the aid of the flight attendants,” says Jodi RR Smith, an etiquette consultant.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 26, 2024

The journalist Stanley Booth, in his book “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” about the glory and the depravity of the band’s 1969 American tour, described Watts as “the world’s politest man.”

From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2021

When confronted about these statements by a reporter, McCain defended the use of the term, saying it was the politest term he could think of.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2021

He remembered no intervening time, no sore feet—but here he was, addressing in the politest terms an old lady who stood in the doorway of a flat-fronted terraced house.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan