Having a gentle or soft manner of speaking; characterized by mild or refined speech.
Compound of 'gentle' (from Latin gentilis meaning well-born) and 'mouthed' (from Old English muð). The compound emerged in early modern English to describe someone whose words were as refined as their breeding.
This word reveals how deeply language in the 16th-17th centuries linked class status with speech patterns—calling someone 'gentlemouthed' was essentially saying their words proved their social worth, which shows how much power people believed words held over identity.
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