no way to treat a lady
1
8.6
- idiom
- Informal
- She told him that forgetting her birthday was no way to treat a lady.
Examples
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He realized that ignoring her at the party was no way to treat a lady.
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Yelling at someone in public is no way to treat a lady.
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That's no way to treat a lady!
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He thinks it's no way to treat a lady to speak like that.
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He realized that ignoring her at the party was no way to treat a lady.
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She told him that forgetting her birthday was no way to treat a lady.
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Yelling at someone in public is no way to treat a lady.
Synonyms
115
3.0
Not polite to someone, for example interrupting them
Antonyms
How Respectful
Surface Forms
Morphology
no + way + to + treat + a + lady
The meaning is directly compositional: 'no way' = not an appropriate manner, 'to treat' = to behave toward, and 'a lady' = a woman, so the intended sense ('this is not an acceptable way to behave toward a woman') is derivable from the parts. This is a productive, literal pattern found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will understand it.
Etymology
No way to treat a lady comes from old polite ideas about how a lady should be treated. It gives a simple picture: saying there is 'no way' to treat her means the behaviour is 'rude' or 'disrespectful', so we use the phrase to say someone's actions toward a woman are not acceptable.