courteous [ME] Medieval courts were associated with good manners, hence the early meaning of courteous, ‘having manners fit for a royal court’. It derived from Old French corteis, based on cort ‘court’. Courtesy [ME], ‘the showing of politeness towards others’, is from the same root, and got shortened to produce curtsey [E16th]. Court itself is from the same period and goes back to Latin cohors which had, as the English word has, the senses of both ‘courtyard’ and ‘retinue’, and is the source of the word cohort [LME] originally a tenth of a Roman legion.