"The pert fairies and the dapper elves."
(Comus, l. 118.)
Pert seems in fact to have acquired the meaning of its opposite malapert, though the older sense of brisk, sprightly, survives in dialect—
"He looks spry and peart for once."
(Phillpotts, American Prisoner, Ch. 3.)
Smug, cognate with Ger. schmuck, trim, elegant, beautiful, has its original sense in Shakespeare—
"And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly."
(1 Henry IV., iii. 1.)
The degeneration of an adjective is sometimes due to its employment for euphemistic purposes. The favourite substitute for fat is stout, properly strong,[57] dauntless, etc., cognate with Ger. stolz, proud. Precisely the same euphemism appears in French, e.g., "une dame un peu forte." Ugly is replaced in English by plain, and in American by homely—
"She is not so handsome as these, maybe, but her homeliness is not actually alarming."