handsome

The compound handsome appears in English around 1530, built from the noun hand and the suffix -some, which Old English inherited from Proto-Germanic -samaz meaning tending toward or characterized by. At its earliest, handsome meant easy to handle, convenient, or well-suited to the task at hand. A handsome tool was one that fit the palm properly. A handsome sum was one conveniently rounded.

The word shifted toward aesthetic meaning by the 1580s, when writers began applying it to people who were pleasing to deal with in a broader sense — agreeable, generous, apt. The step to physical appearance came through an association between personal convenience and personal grace. By 1600, Christopher Marlowe and his contemporaries were using handsome to mean good-looking, particularly for men or for objects well-proportioned.

The older sense of appropriate or ample persisted alongside the new one for two centuries. A handsome apology was a generous one; a handsome estate was a well-ordered one. Samuel Johnson in 1755 still listed proper and convenient as the primary senses, noting the visual meaning as secondary. Only in the 19th century did beauty fully take over.

English settled on handsome for a particular register of attractiveness — one associated with dignity, proportion, and a certain sober elegance rather than prettiness or delicacy. A man could be handsome; a woman could be handsome; a building or coastline could be handsome. The word kept just enough of its original sense of fitness to distinguish itself from merely pretty or beautiful.