gallantize

English

Alternative forms

• gallantise

Etymology

gallant +‎ -ize

Verb

gallantize (third-person singular simple present gallantizes, present participle gallantizing, simple past and past participle gallantized)

1. (obsolete) To woo or flirt with.
   • 1728, Joseph Morgan, The History of Algiers:

     […] such opportunities of gallantizing their wives, as the French and other novelists, I mean novel-writers, would insinuate.

   • 1835, James Kirke Paulding, Paulding's Works: Letters from the South, by a Northern man, page 174:

     One day I took a solitary ride there, while Oliver was gallantizing the ladies, a vocation for which his invincible good humour and unfailing vivacity, eminently qualify him.

   • 1873, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Parisians‎^[1]:

     In my days of celibacy, there was a gal at Saratoga whom I gallantized, and whom, while I was at Saratoga, I thought Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley;

2. (obsolete) To socialize in a fashionable manner.
   • 1637, The Principall Passages of Germany, Italy, France, and Other Places:

     Some of the principall Officers, presuming by this small beginning that all was theirs returned to Paris, gallantized it in the City, tooke their pleasure, considered not that their Lords lay in Tents, and betook them to their beds of ease, to the danger, not ruine of his Majesties affairs, whose wakefull eye attending his own, and his peoples welfare, saw what might ensue upon their supine negligence, and salved all againe by an Edict which like a mundifying unguent, cleansing the ulcer, restrained their luxurie, the purport whereof is as followesth.

   • 1738, François Rabelais, The Works of Francis Rabelais, page 256:

     which swaggering down to the lowermost bottom of the breeches, cannot abide (for being quite out of all order and method) the stately fashion of the high and lofty cod-piece; as is manifest, by the Noble Valentin Viardiere, whom I found at Nancie, on the first Day of May (the more flauntingly to gallantize it afterwards) rubbing his Ballocks, spread out upon a Table after the Manner of a Spanish Cloak.

   • 1858, Charles Astor Bristed, Pieces of a Broken-down Critic:

     They have waxed to be most flagrant, outrageous, and abandoned dancers ; they do ponder on noughte but how to gallantize it at balls, routs, and fandangos, insomuch that the like was in no time or place ever observed before.