comeliness

American  

[kuhm-lee-nis] / ˈkʌm li nɪs /

noun

1. the quality of being attractive or pleasing in appearance.

   Her friend, a middle-aged woman, had retained much of her youthful comeliness.

   In spite of their perceived lack of comeliness, ridgebacks are well known for their ability to hunt and guard.

2. the quality of being seemly or proper in behavior.

   The word in Arabic carries the meanings of virtue, beauty, goodness, comeliness, and “doing what is beautiful” all at once.

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Etymology

Origin of comeliness

comely ( def. ) + -ness ( def. )

Example Sentences

As an adult, he is played by Jacob Elordi, an excellent match for Ms. Robbie, both in comeliness and star power.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 11, 2026

The goal was to enable Disney to avoid the honky-tonk character of development around Disneyland in Anaheim, and instead keep the Florida property in perfectly coiffed white-bread comeliness.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 23, 2023

Ms. Surya smartly foregrounds all that comeliness and every so often folds in a long shot that turns the characters into doll-like figures, a downsizing that gestures toward a nature vs. culture dynamic, maybe.

From New York Times • Jun. 21, 2018

Most dung fungi are *not* known for their, er, comeliness.

From Scientific American • Sep. 5, 2012

The young birds hatched from these lovely eggs are proverbial for their ugliness, Pichon de Urraca being a term of contempt commonly applied to a person remarkable for want of comeliness.

From Argentine Ornithology, Volume II (of 2) A descriptive catalogue of the birds of the Argentine Republic. by Hudson, W. H. (William Henry)