Please

Her presentation pleased the executives.

I'm pleased to see you've been behaving yourself.

Our new range of organic foods is sure to please.

And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties ; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia—for Virginia, M. Stutz thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, […].

World tour, media whore / "Please the Press in Belgium!" / This was your life

How can an operator be, at the same time, top for overall satisfaction and bottom for value for money? I turned to Anthony Smith for the answer, leaning on his 20 years running Transport Focus and its predecessors. It's commuters, he explained. "You can't please commuters, you can only not displease them."

Just do as you please.

He doesn't think, he just says whatever he pleases.

Whatsoeuer the Lord pleased, that did he in heauen and in earth: in the Seas, and all deepe places.

“Will any gentleman please to get outside and make room for a lady?”

Please, pass the bread.

Would you please sign this form?

Could you tell me the time, please?

May I take your order, please?

Q: Should I call him to confirm? A: Please do.

(Michael): Yuri Andropov! What are you doing in my closet of anxieties again? (Yuri): Uh, oh. This is not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.? (Michael): Does it look like it? You're in the wrong nightmare again!! (Yuri): ★@#*!?! Soviet maps ... worth nothing! Give, please, directions to White House.

Near-synonym: thank you

May I help you? —(Yes,) please.

D'you mind if I open the window? —Please do.

Oh, please, do we have to hear that again?

So it's safe to let a 10-year-old use a gun? Please.

So now I have to go back there a third time? Please!

Please with that damn harmonica!

Please with all the ads, I just want to watch the movie.

Customer while ordering: Can I get a [unintelligible]? Restaurant employee: Please?

Fellow: May I have a few days off to get married? Reply, in the Cincinnati idiom by a boss who had heard the sound but not the sense: Boss: Please?

Even though I heard it was supposed to be German-Catholic background, there’s only one thing German — they say ‘please’ [for the more common ‘pardon me’], which comes from bitte.

[…] He explained in broken English that one of his daughters was ill and he probably could not be there. I did not understand all that he said, so asked, ‘Please?’ per Cincinnati custom. ‘There is no need to plead. I will be there if she is feeling better,’ he replied.

Cincinnati are some of the most polite persons I have ever met in the US. When asking someone a question, instead of saying “Excuse me,” or “Pardon,” they say “Please?”

By the same token, one contestant who doesn’t hear a particular question could say “Pardon me?” while another could say “Please?” Again, neither would be lying if he said he was from Ohio.

In Maine, where as much as a quarter of the population has French ancestry, you may hear a stray hair called a couette, and in parts of Ohio please is used in the same way as the German bitte, to invite a person to repeat something just said — apparently a remnant of the bilingual schooling once available in Cincinnati.

Ellen grew up outside of Cincinnati and believed her own talk was the “norm,” while others were speakers of dialects. She was in graduate school before she learned that not all people say, Please? to mean Can you repeat that?