https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/146878?rskey=L...
b. Of a person, social group, etc.: refined; cultured, cultivated; (also) well-regulated. Now chiefly in polite society, circles, etc.
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionar...
used for talking about people of a high social class, usually suggesting that they pretend that things they consider to be unpleasant do not exist
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/de...
[only before noun] from a class of society that believes it is better than others
- ‘Bum’ is not a word we use in polite company.
- The scandal outraged polite society.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/...
Is LSD about to return to polite society?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/...
Can Trump do a Nixon and re-enter polite society? Elizabeth Drew doubts it
Asking if Donald Trump can rehabilitate himself in US public life as did a disgraced president before him, legendary Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew was not optimistic.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jan...
The alliance they organised between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right (...) can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society. (...) Once again, polite society found no reason to take offence. Indeed, it cheered itself hoarse when Galloway dodged pertinent questions from US senators about how many starving Iraqi children had seen the profits from the option to buy 23 million barrels of oil Saddam gave his charity. (...) There is obviously an element of bourgeois snobbery about prole-TV at work here. But it is also the case that polite society couldn't break with the thug on anything resembling a serious point of principle because it had so compromised itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/aust...
Kim Kardashian and her fans defy polite society and the sneers of the elite (...) Controversy will always swirl around the disruption of the status quo. The latest pillar of polite society to bow to the crushing forces of the Kardashian Wests was that standard bearer of high-end fashion, Vogue magazine, which put the pair on the April 2014 cover.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201...
What does it take these days to be banished from polite society? Once it was easy to know how to stay in high society.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/mar...
According to the British Psychological Society, referees exhibit anti-social tendencies that would be frowned upon in polite society but which make them uniquely suited to the job.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201...
Even in polite society, fear-mongering, negative stereotyping and abuse are now out of control – as I know from bitter experience. (...) But the fact is that you can now say things about Muslims, in polite society and even among card-carrying liberal lefties, that you cannot say about any other group or minority. Am I expected to shrug this off?