Etiolation

( Med .) This term is sometimes used in Pathology to denote the palene produced in those persons who have been kept long without light, or a similar palene resulting from a chronic disease. Etiological, a. Pertaining to ætiology or etiology. Etiology, n. See ÆTIOLOGY. Etiquette, (et-e- ket ',) n. [Fr., a ticket, ceremony.] The forms of manners and behavior that prevail in polite society, established by usage and good breeding. The name is probably derived from the custom that prevailed, on state occasions, of delivering a ticket to each person, instructing him as to the part which he was to take in the ceremony. At no time, probably, was the spirit of E. so predominant and so tyrannical as at the court of Louis XIV. of France. At the present day, the E. of European courts is becoming le and le strict; and in private society, many of the old and absurd forms are given up. " E. ," says a writer on this subject, "is the barrier which society draws around itself as a protection against offences the law cannot touch; it is a shield against the intrusion of the impertinent, the improper, and the vulgar; a guard against those obtuse persons who, having neither talent nor delicacy, would be continually thrusting themselves into the society of men to whom their presence might (from the difference of feeling and habit) be offensive and even insupportable." The rules that are laid down on this subject are various, and are to be properly learned only by experience. Generally, however, a person going into society should maintain a certain degree of self-respect, and regard for the feelings of others, and should endeavor to make himself agreeable.