Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Pleasing and wholesome in appearance; attractive. synonym: beautiful.
  • adjective Suitable; seemly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Suitably or fittingly; gracefully; handsomely; in a pleasing manner.
  • Decent; suitable; proper; becoming; suited to time, place, circumstances, or persons.
  • Handsome; graceful; symmetrical; pleasing in appearance: said of the person or of any part of it, and also of things.
  • Synonyms Handsome, Pretty, etc. See beautiful.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb In a becoming manner.
  • adjective Pleasing or agreeable to the sight; well-proportioned; good-looking; handsome.
  • adjective Suitable or becoming; proper; agreeable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of a person Pleasing or attractive to the eye.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective very pleasing to the eye
  • adjective according with custom or propriety

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English comli, alteration (probably influenced by bicomli, seemly) of cumli, from Old English cȳmlic, lovely, delicate, from cȳme, beautiful.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English cȳmlīċ, from cȳme ("fine, exquisite").

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Examples

  • On January 21st, 1580, the House adopted a resolution stating that Members "should depart and go forth in comely and civil sort for the reverence of the House; in turning about with a low courtesy like as they do make at their coming into the House; and not so unseemingly and rudely to thrust and thrung out as of late time hath been disorderly used."

    Summoned to the Bar 1955

  • This epitaph was written in elegant Latin, but for the convenience of all it was necessary to translate it, although the word comely is feeble beside that of formosa, which signifies beautiful in shape.

    Droll Stories — Volume 2 Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • This epitaph was written in elegant Latin, but for the convenience of all it was necessary to translate it, although the word comely is feeble beside that of formosa, which signifies beautiful in shape.

    Droll Stories — Complete Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • In short, he might pass for what is commonly called a comely black man, with an air of distinction natural to his birth and condition.

    Memoirs of Fanny Hill. 1749

  • In short, he might pass for what is commonly called a comely black man, with an air of distinction natural to his birth and condition.

    Memoirs Of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) John Cleland 1749

  • He makes it according to the beauty of a man, in comely proportion, with those limbs and lineaments that are the beauty of a man, but are altogether unfit to represent the beauty of the Lord.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume IV (Isaiah to Malachi) 1721

  • "Now that's what I calls a comely lad!" continued Nabbem, pointing to the latter horseman; "none of your thin-faced, dark, strapping fellows like that

    Paul Clifford — Volume 06 Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

  • And when they had taken it out, the body was so firm that it bent not on either side, and the flesh so firm and comely, that is seemed as if he were yet alive.

    Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 4 Charles Herbert Sylvester

  • I recall a comely plant, for instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques -- there, where the steps begin ----

    Alone Norman Douglas 1910

  • Anyone would have called her comely, and there were, indeed, no women in Stukely's barn to compare with her in that respect, a fact that she recognized.

    Masters of the Wheat-Lands Harold Bindloss 1905

Comments

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  • wide hips thin waist... I like those paintings

    December 7, 2006

  • ".. Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 27, 2007

  • Paintings of Raphael depict sceneries which are very comely

    August 1, 2014