comely
Meaning
-
- Of a person: attractive or pleasing to look at; beautiful, handsome; also, attractive but not particularly beautiful or handsome.
- Of a person, an action, behaviour, etc.: meeting accepted moral or social norms; appropriate, becoming, proper.
- Of a thing: beautiful, elegant, well-composed; also, delicate, fine.
- (obsolete) Pleasing to the feelings or senses; agreeable, nice, pleasant.
Synonyms
debonair
well groomed
fine-looking
well-favored
graseful
pulchrous
easy to look at
Frequency
Hyphenated as
come‧ly
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ˈkʌmli/
Etymology
In summary
The adjective is derived from Middle English comly, comli, cumly, cumlich (“of a person: beautiful, handsome, etc.; of noble birth, bearing, or character; of behaviour: appropriate, becoming; of an event: convenient; favourable; of a thing: beautiful, wonderful; fitting, proper”), from Old English cymlīċ, cȳmlīċ (“beautiful, comely; splendid; convenient”), from cȳme (“beautiful, comely; splendid; exquisite, fine”) + -līċ (suffix meaning ‘like; relating to’ forming adjectives). Cȳme is derived from Proto-Germanic *kūmiz (“delicate; feeble”), from *kūmalīkaz (“dear; pitiful”), probably related to *kūmaz, *kūmijaz (“pitiful; frail, weak”), from Proto-Indo-European *gewH- (“to call, name; to call on, invoke; to cry, cry out”). The word was influenced by come (verb). The verb is derived from the adjective. cognates * Middle Dutch komelick, komlick * Middle High German gomelīh, komelīh
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Notes
