a. Handsome or attractive in appearance, good-looking.
1420–22. Lydg., Thebes, I. 754. He was a semly knyght, Wel fauoured in euery mannys sight. Ibid. (c. 1430), Min. Poems (Percy Soc.), 40. Your weel favoured face.
1509. Hawes, Past. Pleas., XIV. ii. Thy wel faverde and moost fayre lady.
1549. Cheke, Hurt Sedit. (1569), B iij b. If one be well fauourder than another, will ye punishe him bicause ye looke for an equalitie of all things?
1599. Shaks., Much Ado, III. iii. 15. To be a wel-favoured man, is the gift of Fortune, but to write and reade, comes by Nature.
1633. C. Farewell, E.-India Colation, 15. A man of a liuely countenance and well fauored.
1684. Bunyan, Pilgr., II. (1900), 220. The Boy was in very mean Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance.
1787. Burns, Song, There’s a Youth, 3. He’s bonie and braw, weel-favour’d withal.
1848. Akerman, Anc. & Mod. Coins, v. 89. A well-fed and well-favoured man.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., I. vi. She was a tall, upright, well-favoured woman, though severe of countenance.
β. in Sc. form (well or weel) faird, faur’d, far’d, far’t, faurt, etc.
1535. Lyndesay, Satyre, 4333. Now, wallie fall that weill fairde mow!
15[?]. in Bannatyne MS. (Hunter. Club), 399. A weilfaird may.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, III. 307. There I met with a welfar’d Lass.
1781. Burns, ‘On Cessnock banks,’ i. (var.) The graces of her weel-faur’d face.
1814. Scott, Wav., xlii. He’s vera weel,… but no naithing so well-far’d as your colonel.
1830. A. Picken, Dominie’s Legacy, III. 32. The delinquent and his wife want to get their own infamous conduct shifted now over upon that well fard boy.
1894. Crockett, Raiders, xxiii. 277. I’ll never deny that in the days o’ yer youth ye war a weel-faured lass.
b. of an animal, a locality, a plant.
1539. Bible (Great), Gen. xli. 4. The euyll fauored & leane flesshed kyne did eate vp the seuen welfauored & fatt kyne.
1854. S. Thomson, Wild Flowers, 112. The purple goat’s-beard,… the corn blue-bottle are well-favoured plants.
1861. W. F. Collier, Hist. Eng. Lit., 403. This ill-named and not very well-favoured spot formed the nucleus of Abbotsford.
† c. transf. (cf. WELL-FAVOUREDLY b).
1746. Francis, trans. Hor., Sat., I. v. 34. [He] bangs the mule at a well-favor’d rate.
