Word.ws English Dictionary

genteel lady

genteel lady noun: a traditional memory game in which players must accurately repeat an increasingly long sentence, with forfeits and additional rules imposed for making mistakes.

Noun

genteel lady (uncountable)

  1. (historical) A traditional memory game in which players must accurately repeat an increasingly long sentence, with forfeits and additional rules imposed for making mistakes.
    • […] and finally, laughing and all tired out, they stopped to rest and to think of some other game. They played “Buz” till they were rested, and then “Genteel Lady,” where every time a little girl made a mistake she had to have a lamplighter stuck in her hair.1876, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, volume 44, page 590
    • GENTEEL LADY. This game is played by girls, and she who makes a mistake in it is decorated with a paper horn, a number of which must be prepared previously. All being seated in a circle, one of them turns to her neighbour, and begins the game by saying,— "Good morning, genteel lady, always genteel....1893, Riddles and Rhymes, page 113

Questions about genteel lady

What does genteel lady mean?
Genteel lady means a traditional memory game in which players must accurately repeat an increasingly long sentence, with forfeits and additional rules imposed for making mistakes.
What part of speech is genteel lady?
Genteel lady is a noun.

Words near genteel lady in the dictionary

  1. gentamicins
  2. gentamycin
  3. gentamycine
  4. genteel
  5. genteel business
  6. genteel lady
  7. genteeler
  8. genteelest
  9. genteelise
  10. genteelish
  11. genteelism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: genteel lady (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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