(Max Adeler, Mr Skinner's Night in the Underworld.)
In the case of this word, as in many others, the American use preserves a meaning which was once common in English. Kersey's Dictionary (1720) explains homely as "ugly, disagreeable, course (coarse), mean."
INFLUENCE OF ASSOCIATION
Change of meaning may be brought about by association. A miniature is a small portrait, and we even use the word as an adjective meaning small, on a reduced scale. But the true sense of miniature is something painted in minium, red lead. Florio explains miniatura as "a limning (see p. [63]), a painting with vermilion." Such paintings were usually small, hence the later meaning. The word was first applied to the ornamental red initial capitals in manuscripts. Vignette still means technically in French an interlaced vine-pattern on a frontispiece.[58] Cotgrave has vignettes, "vignets; branches, or branch-like borders, or flourishes in painting, or ingravery."
The degeneration in the meaning of a noun may be partly due to frequent association with disparaging adjectives. Thus hussy, i.e. housewife, quean,[59] woman, wench, child, have absorbed such adjectives as impudent, idle, light, saucy, etc. Shakespeare uses quean only three times, and these three include "cozening quean" (Merry Wives, iv. 2) and "scolding quean" (All's Well, ii. 2). With wench, still used without any disparaging sense by country folk, we may compare Fr. garce, lass, and Ger. Dirne, maid-servant, both of which are now insulting epithets, but, in the older language, could be applied to Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary respectively. Garce was replaced by fille, which has acquired in its turn a meaning so offensive that it has now given way to jeune fille. Minx, earlier minkes, is probably the Low Ger. minsk, Ger. Mensch, lit. human, but used also in the sense of "wench." For the consonantal change cf. hunks, Dan. hundsk, stingy, lit. doggish. These examples show that the indignant "Who are you calling a woman?" is, philologically, in all likelihood a case of intelligent anticipation.
BUXOM—PLUCK
Adjectives are affected in their turn by being regularly coupled with certain nouns. A buxom help-mate was once obedient, the word being cognate with Ger. biegsam, flexible, yielding—
"The place where thou and Death
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen
Wing silently the buxom air."
(Paradise Lost, ii. 840.)
An obedient nature is "buxom, blithe and debonair," qualities which affect the physique and result in heartiness of aspect and a comely plumpness. An arch damsel is etymologically akin to an archbishop, both descending from the Greek prefix ἀρχι, from ἀρχή, a beginning, first cause. Shakespeare uses arch as a noun—