Word.ws English Dictionary

homely as a hedge fence

homely as a hedge fence adjective: having no physically attractive characteristics, but not blatantly ugly; very plain in appearance.

Adjective

homely as a hedge fence

  1. (US, dated, idiomatic) Having no physically attractive characteristics, but not blatantly ugly; very plain in appearance.
    • "I must have a husband!" said Miss Crooks, "what shall I do? Here I am hard upon my 25th year, and they say I am as homely as a hedge fence to boot! what shall I do?"1850 October 7, "A Trifling Mistake," The Adams Sentinal (Gettysbury, Pennsylvania), p. 1 (Google news archive)
    • This Subaru station wagon was as homely as a hedge fence and cramped as a corn crib, but it was the immediate hit of every ski town in the country.1988 December, Denise McCluggage, "Top Snow Country Vehicles," Snow Country Magazine, p. 71 (Google preview) (retrieved 7 April 2019)

Questions about homely as a hedge fence

What does homely as a hedge fence mean?
Homely as a hedge fence means having no physically attractive characteristics, but not blatantly ugly; very plain in appearance.
What part of speech is homely as a hedge fence?
Homely as a hedge fence is an adjective.

Words near homely as a hedge fence in the dictionary

  1. homelinesses
  2. homeling
  3. homelings
  4. homelives
  5. homely
  6. homely as a hedge fence
  7. homelyn
  8. homelyness
  9. homelyns
  10. homemade
  11. homemake

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: homely as a hedge fence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “homely as a hedge fence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/homely_as_a_hedge_fence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.