To think describing someone as ‘well bred’ is problematic?

[efchari]

A friend commented that her first impression of me is that I seemed ‘well bred’. In other words she thought I was a bit posh.

Problematic in the sense that it suggests manners and generally polite behaviour is in your bloodline because you come from generations of people in a privileged class position, yes.

Us proles can also have nice manners.

I think my cat is well bred. She is healthy, friendly, clean and is a member of a fairly rare Oriental breed. I know all about her parents.

Well bred can just mean well brought up.

It’s a weird thing to say about a human

You'd have to be very short of problems, to find that problematic.

It's a weird, date phrase but I wouldn't read anymore into it that what you've already deduced. She thinks you're dead fancy.

*dated

It was a compliment. It means you are polite , have nice manners, don’t make people throw up when they eat with you.

Yes, but it’s ascribing her good manners to her ‘breeding’.

So old fashioned! Sounds like some Victorian.

Historically, “posh” people were essentially bred: marriages were all about family alliances, financial gain, power ties, and breeding suitable heirs. None of the upper class people I know would refute that! Well-bred as a phrase just acknowledges that in passing and indicates somebody has the outward markers of that sort of background.

It's very old fashioned, but generally intended as a compliment.

I find the world problematic problematic.

It is about class I.E. wealth and inequality.
Of course it is problematic.

Absolutely they were ‘bred’, like racehorse bloodlines. (Didn’t Prince Philip reputedly say approvingly of Diana that she would ‘breed in some height’?)

I suppose I don’t like the term because it implies that ‘breeding” begets a certain kind of good behaviour, and the deeply unpleasant flipside, that bad or criminal behaviour results from ‘bad blood’ and ‘bad breeding’. Which recalls eugenics or those late Victorian attempts to classify ‘criminal’ features.

I think it sounds fine, and should be taken as the compliment it was intended as.

I assume it means you speak nicely and are well mannered. Nothing wrong with that.

All my cats are rufty tufty rescues. They had absentee fathers, and undoubtedly mothers of low moral fibre.
Still friendly (well 3 out if 4 are), healthy and clean though.
Cats can be socially mobile too 🤣.

Being serious I'd just take 'well bred' as a compliment, albeit an old fashioned one, just meaning polite and well mannered. I wouldn't necessarily see it as a class thing.

Lots of people though aren't that intelligent, so the comments don't surprise me

Exactly this ^

Around where I live it's used jokingly to say posh/from a 'titled' bloodline - the whole point of the joke is that it's weird.
However, I have met posh old people who say it sincerely, so...

Like a dog?

There was a great documentary about aristocrats years ago and one classic line was ‘breeding always tells’…….it certainly did. They were all barking.

It would be more appropriate to say you have nice genes

MissTrip82 · Today 10:23
Like a dog?

There was a great documentary about aristocrats years ago and one classic line was ‘breeding always tells’…….it certainly did. They were all barking”

🤣

Our little dog on the other hand was trailer trash. Best behave animal we’ve ever had.

I'd take it as manners, politeness, etc rather than a class thing.

Socially acceptable belief in eugenics?