different between gentle vs assuasive

English

Etymology

From Middle English gentil (“courteous, noble”), from Old French gentil (“high-born, noble”), from Latin gentilis (“of the same family or clan”), from gens (“[Roman] clan”). Doublet of gentile and genteel.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?d??ntl?/
• (General American) enPR: j?n?tl, IPA^(key): /?d??ntl?/, [?d??????l?]
• Hyphenation: gen?tle

Adjective

gentle (comparative gentler or more gentle, superlative gentlest or most gentle)

1. Tender and amiable; of a considerate or kindly disposition.

2. Soft and mild rather than hard or severe.

3. Docile and easily managed.

   a gentle horse

4. Gradual rather than steep or sudden.

5. Polite and respectful rather than rude.

6. (archaic) Well-born; of a good family or respectable birth, though not noble.
   • 1823, Walter Scott, Peveril of the Peak

     "You are of gentle blood," she said […]

   • 1893-1897, Charles Kendal Adams (editor), Johnsons Universal Encyclopedia

     British society is divided into nobility, gentry, and yeomanry, and families are either noble, gentle, or simple.

Synonyms

• (polite): friendly, kind, polite, respectful

Antonyms

• (polite): rude

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

gentle (third-person singular simple present gentles, present participle gentling, simple past and past participle gentled)

1. (intransitive) to become gentle
   • 2013, Kathryn L.M. Reynolds, Garland Roses, Kathryn L.M. Reynolds (?ISBN), page 226

     “She's experienced a horrific and nasty scare and is in a state of shock, but otherwise she's relatively okay.” Conrad replied, his tone at first grim (as he recalled what he'd seen in the family room) and then it gentled to a more doctorial tone as he directed his next comments to his patient.

2. (transitive, obsolete) to ennoble
   • c. 1599, Henry V, by Shakespeare, Act IV Scene III

     […] For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition […]

3. (transitive, animal husbandry) to break; to tame; to domesticate
   • 2008, Frank Leslie, The Killing Breed, Penguin (?ISBN)

     Yakima could have tried to catch him, gentle him as Wolf had been gentled, but having two stallions in his cavvy would lead to a different kind of trouble.

4. (transitive) To soothe; to calm; to make gentle.
   • 1996, William C. Loring, An American Romantic-realist Abroad: Templeton Strong and His Music, Scarecrow Press (?ISBN), page 201

     A hornist, his playing gentled by perspective, is out of sight within the woods, but his notes are heard through or over the murmuring mix of bird song and breeze in leaves.

Noun

gentle (plural gentles)

1. (archaic) A person of high birth.
   • 2012, Lizzie Stark, Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games, Chicago Review Press (?ISBN), page 43:

     While actual medieval societies were full of lots of peasants and a few rich and noble gentles, SCA personas tend to be nobles rather than commoners.

2. (fishing) A maggot used as bait by anglers.
3. A trained falcon, or falcon-gentil.

English

Etymology

From assuage (“to relieve, soothe”) on the model of persuasive.

Adjective

assuasive (comparative more assuasive, superlative most assuasive)

1. Mild, soothing.
   • 1713, Alexander Pope, Ode for Musick, London: Bernard Lintott, pp. 2-3,^[1]

     If in the Breast tumultuous Joys arise,

     Musick her soft, assuasive Voice applies;

     Or when the Soul is press’d with Cares

     Exalts her in enlivening Airs.

   • 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 282,^[2]

     “ […] Perhaps,” said Bounderby, starting with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, “you know where your daughter is at the present time?”

   • 1882, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, Boston: James R. Osgood, 1883, Chapter 12, p. 152,^[3]

     The medicine, whatever it might be, had the merit, rare in doctor’s stuff, of being pleasant to take, assuasive of thirst, and imbued with a hardly perceptible fragrance,

   • 1965, Robert Wilder, Fruit of the Poppy, New York: Putnam, Chapter 1, p. 16,^[4]

     The stuff gagged him but he forced it down. This wasn’t smart but the alcohol had an assuasive effect.

Derived terms

• assuasively

Noun

assuasive (plural assuasives)

1. (archaic) Anything that soothes.
   • 1808, Thomas Coke, A History of the West Indies, Liverpool, Volume 1, Chapter 1, p. 65,^[5]

     […] the heat of the sun operates in all its vigour, without an assuasive to mitigate its force.

   • 1817, Richard Yates, The Basis of National Welfare, London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al., § 9, p. 112,^[6]

     the bland, the courteous, the truly Christian assuasives of friendly attention

   • 1908, Mary Virginia Terhune (as Marion Harland), The Housekeeper’s Week, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Chapter 23, p. 312,^[7]

     Nature, as the laity may know it, is a vast pharmacopœia of assuasives and curatives