Please

"Please" is a shortening of the phrase, if you please, an intransitive, ergative form taken from if it please you, which is in turn a calque of the French s'il vous plaît, which replaced pray.

[3] The use of "please" often reflects an illocutionary act, making its presence in a sentence more a matter of functionality than politeness, but it remains the case that omitting "please" in certain circumstances can be perceived as impoliteness.

[4] On a philosophical level, it has been argued that use of "please" embodies the Kantian ethic of treating the person to whom it is spoken as an end, rather than a means, acknowledging them to be inherently worthy of respect.

[5] One study found that using "please" in unusual situations, such as with a seller asking someone to buy something for a charitable cause, yielded a negative result, with customers being less likely to make a purchase when it was used.

[10] In certain Western cultures, "parents put a lot of effort into teaching their children to be polite, to say 'thank you' or 'please' for every single favor done by anyone".

[11] A 1902 newspaper article suggested that use of "please" in England was, at that time, limited to servants, and that children who used it would find that it "stamped them as underbred", leading to the conclusion that "please" would fall out of use elsewhere.