Think of an ordinary home, not a photograph of one: chairs that do not match, a rug that has been walked on for years, a kettle that is always warm. Nothing in the picture is new, styled or on display. That plainness is the whole image, and English has read it in two opposite ways. Read it as comfort and homely becomes a compliment — the room relaxes you, the person relaxes you, the household holds together. Read it as nothing-special and homely becomes a remark about a face with nothing striking in it. Same picture, two readings, and which one a listener takes depends mostly on where they learned their English.
From the word’s history
The supplied source traces homely to Middle English homly, hoomly, hamely and to Old English *hāmlīċ, and describes it as home plus -ly. The same source records the Middle English word as already meaning both domestic and plain or unattractive, so the two modern readings are both old.
本次證據裡的 Wiktionary 記載：homely 來自中古英文 homly／hoomly／hamely，再往上是古英文 *hāmlīċ，等於 home 加 -ly，也就是「屬於家的」。同一筆資料也寫到，中古英文那個字當時就同時有「家常的、熟悉的」和「樸素、不好看」的意思。所以今天英式和美式的分歧，不是後來才吵起來的，而是這個字本來就帶著兩面。
Wiktionary entry supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:708177525:21535)
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