couth

Familiar, known; well-known, renowned.

Variant of couthie.

Variant of couthie.

Squad leaders were responsible for doing periodic checks to make sure soldiers were living a couth lifestyle, as Joes would compete regularly to see whose room was nicer.

Marked by or possessing a high degree of sophistication; cultured, refined.

So Dennis May thrilled me in a recent issue when he described Raymond Mays' 1939 E.R.A. racer as a "couth" little Merc-like model.

Yet the dancers are beautiful, their cool movement has a couth simplicity, and there are moments when a gesture of almost absolute beauty stands transfixed in some transom of sublime comprehension.

Social grace, refinement, sophistication; etiquette, manners.

That man has no couth.

There is an aspect of the cultural conservative argument that sometimes drifts dangerously close to tha view, elitist to the core, as elitist as the New Class, as elitist as limousine liberalism: The public ain't got no couth. You can hear those old-fashioned elitist wheels spinning: Maybe we need a few government regulations to deal with the couth shortage.

A person with social graces; a refined or sophisticated person.

We transformed the uncouths into couths, the unkempts into kempts, the inerts into erts! We did it all by speaking to teen-agers on their own terms and in their own language.

I'm going to hit that "Gulf of Texas" beach with a bundle of couths and suaves because those Texas gals that hang around the big shrimp boats are used to good living.