COURTSHIP

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does courtship mean? 

• COURTSHIP (noun)
  The noun COURTSHIP has 1 sense:

1. a man's courting of a woman; seeking the affections of a woman (usually with the hope of marriage)

  Familiarity information: COURTSHIP used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COURTSHIP (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A man's courting of a woman; seeking the affections of a woman (usually with the hope of marriage)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

courting; courtship; suit; wooing

Context example:

its was a brief and intense courtship

Hypernyms ("courtship" is a kind of...):

appeal; entreaty; prayer (earnest or urgent request)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "courtship"):

bundling (a onetime custom during courtship of unmarried couples occupying the same bed without undressing)

 Context examples 

They generally run on the same theme—courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe—marriage.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

We sailors, Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The scientists rated each session based on the number of minutes of courtship by the male – shown by sustained hovering near or actively chasing the females.

(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)

Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Elizabeth did all she could to shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

It is just what I used to say to a certain gentleman in company in the days of courtship, when, because things did not go quite right, did not proceed with all the rapidity which suited his feelings, he was apt to be in despair, and exclaim that he was sure at this rate it would be May before Hymen's saffron robe would be put on for us.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

And without attempting any farther remonstrance, she left Fanny to her fate, a fate which, had not Fanny's heart been guarded in a way unsuspected by Miss Crawford, might have been a little harder than she deserved; for although there doubtless are such unconquerable young ladies of eighteen (or one should not read about them) as are never to be persuaded into love against their judgment by all that talent, manner, attention, and flattery can do, I have no inclination to believe Fanny one of them, or to think that with so much tenderness of disposition, and so much taste as belonged to her, she could have escaped heart-whole from the courtship (though the courtship only of a fortnight) of such a man as Crawford, in spite of there being some previous ill opinion of him to be overcome, had not her affection been engaged elsewhere.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being numbered.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A team of academics from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, observed the courtship rituals and sequenced the DNA from nearly 300 butterflies to find out how much of the genome was responsible for their mating behaviour.

(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)