Chivalry

How to spell chivalry

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce chivalry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chivalry mean?

1. nounCourteous, honourable and considerate behaviour, especially by men towards others.
2. nounThe medieval system of knighthood and its code of honour, courage and service.

Chivalry in a sentence

• He showed real chivalry by carrying the elderly woman's bags up the stairs.

• The museum exhibit traced the rise of chivalry across medieval Europe.

• Old-fashioned chivalry still has a place in everyday manners at work.

• Her thesis examined how the ideals of chivalry shaped the behaviour of knights.

Where does chivalry come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English in the 1300s from the Old French chevalerie, which described the conduct and skills of a mounted knight. That French term was built on chevalier, meaning 'knight' or 'horseman', which in turn came from cheval, the French word for 'horse'. The horse traces back to the Late Latin caballus, an everyday word for a workhorse or nag, as opposed to the more elegant Latin equus. The link to horses explains the spelling perfectly: a knight was first and foremost a man on horseback, so the system of honour, courage and courtesy expected of him kept the 'chival' (horse-rider) root at its heart. The same caballus ancestor also gave English 'cavalry' and 'cavalier', which is a useful reminder that the tricky 'ch' here is pronounced like 'sh' because the word came through French rather than directly from Latin.

How the word is built

• chival- (from Old French cheval: horse)
• -ry (noun-forming suffix)