marked by a ritualistic courtliness in which two often competing participants graciously but stubbornly defer to each other: a kind of Alphonse and Gaston act in which each man insisted the other go through the doorway first.
Also, Alphonse-and-Gaston .
[ after the title characters of a cartoon strip by American cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper (1857-1937), which first appeared in 1905 ]