arch. Good style, good breeding; polite or fashionable society; the fashionable world. Also attrib.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl. (1815), 120. She lives in the bon ton … and is visited by persons of the first fashion.
1807. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 356. To harangue the bon-ton reader.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 1 Aug., 10/2. There was a word, or rather a phrase, in common use among them a century or so gone by which has fallen into desuetude with us. No one now speaks of bon ton.
