Keep your distance? 保持距离_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Keep your distance? 保持距离

Reader question:

Please explain "keep our distance, in a good way", as in: Life in quarantine for the coronavirus forces everyone to learn to keep their distance, in a good way.

My comments:

The seasoned English learner probably understands what's behind the phrase "keep your distance".

If a gentleman (in an Victorian-era novel, for example) tells a commoner to always know to "keep your distance", the gentleman is really ordering the commoner to know his place, i.e. his low place in society. By ordering the commoner to keep his distance, the gentleman is telling the latter to stop acting in any way that may suggest they're familiar or close or friendly.

Class difference makes such familiarity or closeness or friendliness between the two quite inappropriate. Strict professionalism must be observed at all times.

In other words, the gentleman is talking about social propriety, propriety of a kind. Especially among what's known as polite society, people give others space or privacy.

We Chinese are not known for giving each other space or privacy, at least this was the case in the past. In the past, in close-knit communities such as quadrangle courtyards in Beijing or any village in the countryside, people were really onto each other, like, everyone was into each other's business and totally without guard or fuss.