What does RSVP mean?

Most people are familiar with the concept of replying to a party invitation via R.S.V.P., but what exactly do those letters represent? Learn more about the origins and practices of etiquette in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:29):
Brain with today's question, what does rs VP mean? Rs
VP stands for a French phrase respond a cbo play,
which means please reply. The person sending the invitation would
like you to tell him or her whether you accept
or decline the invitation, that is, will you be coming

(00:50):
to the event or not. Etiquette rules followed in most
Western cultures require that if you receive a formal, written invitation,
you should reply promptly, perhaps that same day. For hosts
who are planning a dinner party, a wedding, or a reception,
this is important from their point of view because they
need to know how many people to count on and

(01:11):
how much food to buy. More important, though, is the
simple courtesy of responding to someone who is nice enough
to invite you, even if it's to say that you
regret that you won't be able to attend. Many wedding
invitations come with a response card that you can mail
back right away. Other written invitations will carry the host
telephone number, so you can call with your reply. Although

(01:34):
under strict etiquette rules are written invitation requires a written reply. Nowadays,
invitations often carry a regrets only notation at the end.
That means that the host will count on your being
there unless you tell him or her otherwise. Some people
even use r s v P as a verb, as

(01:55):
in have you rs VP to that invitation? Yet, you
might wonder why we used the initials of a French
phrase and an invitation that's written in English. You could
say that the French invented etiquette, although that would be
a simplification because there have always been rules to follow
in civilization. In fact, an Italian diplomat wrote the first

(02:17):
book about proper Behavior among nobility in the sixteenth century.
Many of the practices of Western etiquette, however, came from
the French court of King Louis the fourteenth in the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries at Versailles his palace.
Louis the fourteenth had rules for court behavior written on

(02:39):
what French referred to as tickets. Get it tickets etiquette.
The tickets either were signs posted at Versailles or were
the invitations issued to court events with the rules of
behavior printed on the back. Experts give different versions of
the origin, and French was the language of refinement and

(03:00):
high society through the nineteenth century in the United States.
Judith Martin, the author of etiquette books and a syndicated
newspaper columnists known as Missmanners. Thanks that rs VP came
about is a polite way of reminding people of something
that they should already know. If you receive an invitation,
you should reply for more on this and thousands of

(03:23):
other topics because it has staff works dot com, Streaming
TV shows and movies directly to your home is a
breeze with Netflix. As a Netflix member, you can instantly
watch TV and movies on your PC, mac, mobile device,
or right on your television. Get a free thirty day
trial membership. Go to Netflix dot com, slash brain stuff

(03:45):
and sign up today.