etiquette [M18th] A French word which means literally ‘label or ticket’ and also ‘list of ceremonial observances at a royal court’. Its Old French root is the source of our word *ticket. It is not completely clear why the word moved from meaning ‘ticket or label’ to ‘code of correct behaviour’, but the French seems to have taken the sense from the Spanish use of the borrowed French word. The very formal and strict rules of ceremony and hierarchy in the Spanish court in the 16th century were written in an official list.