[f. next.]
1. The quality of being uncomely; want of comeliness († or seemliness); an uncomely feature.
1542. Becon, Potation for Lent, G iij. To make clene ye face of our hart, from all fylthinesse of synnes & from the vncomelynes of trespasse.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, III. xxiv. (Arb.), 297. In euery vncomlinesse there must be a certaine absurditie and disproportion to nature.
1624. Heywood, Gunaik., II. 64. They raysed a kind of uncomelinesse and deformitie in the faces of such as playd upon them.
1670. Milton, Hist. Brit., II. 60. Her own Subjects, who detested … the uncomeliness of thir Subjection to the Monarchie of a Woeman.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 52, ¶ 3. The native and unaffected Uncomeliness of her Person.
1795. Burke, Abridgm. Eng. Hist., Wks. 1842, II. 509. He has joined to these powers of living existence uncomeliness, want of strength, want of distinction.
1865. M. Arnold, Ess. Crit., iv. (1873), 164. That brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism, representing it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness.
† 2. Unruliness. Obs.–1
1607. Markham, Cavel., V. 22. If you finde his [a horse’s] vncomelinesse onelye proceedes from ticklishnesse.
