Homely describes someone who's plain or unattractive, like your homely Aunt Agnes or her squish-faced bulldog. The adjective homely is a slightly more gentle word than ugly, with a meaning closer to "plain" than "hideous." It's almost always used to describe a less-than-attractive person, and occasionally an animal.

How did homely come to mean ugly?

Probably because the word was so often descriptive of physically unattractive people, it came to mean physically unattractive. ... That, I think, was in fact what the word was meant to imply, but the innocent connotation came, in time, to mean ugly . Plain and homely : two plain, homely words gone to the dogs.

What does homely mean?

1 : suggestive or characteristic of a place of residence or home. 2 : being something familiar with which a person is comfortable and at ease : comfortable and familiar like home satisfy themselves with houses, furniture, books and clothes that were worn and homely and friendly to the touch— Brendan Gill.