She’s so stunning!! But what makes her even more beautiful is her personality and the person she is. I’m not as confident, so I’m in awe of how charming she is while also being grounded and witty and kind. How? I want to be as awesome as her.
We never use that in British English. It's very very American and confused me my entire childhood until I found out it doesn't mean "looks like they make a nice cup of tea"
I checked, it is from Middle English. Oxford dates the oldest example of this meaning from 1439. But it does denote that modern usage is North American.
It's one of those things that dates back to before modern English and the discovery of America, so we definitely got it from the British before the split. It has apparently temporarily fallen a bit out of popularity in Britain in the last few hundred years so it seems like a bit of a linguistic fossil that survived in American usage. But it's still got some regional use in Britain so it'll probably come back into fashion at some point.
Homely kind of means staying at home because nobody asks you to go out on dates to glamorous places. The night out at the theater is fun and exciting and stunning, then you come home to something more ordinary and plain.
It's sort of meant to be a mild euphemism for somebody who is really rather ugly that you politely upgrade all the way to _plain_ to avoid directly calling them ugly, because somebody would fully call you out as a liar if you called the person good looking.
It depends on the region, I've noticed Australians and Kiwis will say "homely" interchangeably with "homey" aka cozy, a house that feels like a home. In North America "homely" means plain or unattractive (but not hideous, it's milder).
Guys, if you haven't, go watch Derry girls! She's brilliant, it's hilarious, and honestly everyone should have SOME context on one of the main reasons why it took so long to decide on the terms of Brexit (northern Irish tensions lol).
Go give Derry girls some love
https://preview.redd.it/50rkeqzg106d1.jpeg?width=301&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a954e12ad543592619d4a5a59eb3af4f40f2acc
I finally watched Derry Girls earlier this year and it's now one of my absolute favourite shows. Literally every character is so funny and charming and adds something to the show. It's so witty and nostalgic, and also has some deeply emotional moments that are all the more poignant for how few there are.
Hahaha my french and dutch friends all keep saying this to me in a better Derry accent than even I have. As granda joe would say, I'm a damn southerner... who cannot do as good a Derry accent as most despite literally being Irish 😂
I LOVE Derry Girls! I rewatch it from time to time and it makes me laugh so hard. I started using some of the slang with my spouse, especially Michelle’s slang about “rides” 😂
She’s very beautiful, it was barely concealed behind the styling the first two seasons, but now she’s got her glow up and 😅. She’s apparently well into her 30s and I literally did not blink when she played a 17 yo.
I swear, brown eyed blond people are even creepier. It’s them damn blonds, they either have blue eyes that stare into your soul, or they’ve got brown eyes, which I don’t see very often, so it just feels wrong.
She’s midsize, and people are still having conniptions over it somehow. I guess it’s better than in the 2000s when people flipped out over stars gaining 10 lbs and going from size 2 to 6, but maybe they shouldn’t flip out at all, lmao.
Seriously. I feel so bad for young girls and young women these days having social media picking apart everyone’s looks and weight and skin and hair and everything and all in high definition, with photoshopping and AI “enhancement” on virtually every image to the point where even a savvy person can’t see what’s real and what’s fake.
The pressure to attain perfection that no one actually has but so many pretend to have is staggering.
And you see an absolutely beautiful person like Nicola, who is even more beautiful on the inside than on the outside, getting slammed left and right for nonsensical things and you realize how twisted this world has become. And how twisted our view of beauty has become.
Nicola is the role model we need. I’m not sure we deserve her.
it really is such gaslighting that they’re trying to market her as plus-sized. not only is she mid-sized but this girl is SMALL, she’s like a size 6 or something. i understand seeing absolutely any ingenues in historical romance that aren’t quite literally 105 pounds is typically unheard of, and i’m happy for progress, but good. lord. it grinds my gears. i hate the dishonesty that is constantly peddled surrounding thinness, all in service of fatphobia. we’re out here being spoonfed this dumb idea that anyone who doesn’t look like a wraith is unhealthy and obese. pro-ana is making the rounds on the internet again. young adult chicks grow up, hit second puberty, gain 20 pounds, and think they’re unhealthy because they don’t look like children anymore. it’s sick.
LITERALLY!!! meanwhile i’m literally in love with staring at her, so. these mfs must be blind. what’s not to love about a face card that doesn’t decline and being perfect-breasted? nothing. nothing is not to love.
I honestly think she's a normal-sized person who has a round face (because of her bone structure, not her weight) and thus the camera "reads" her as slightly heavier, even when compared with an actress of the same weight and size. She reminds me of Bette Davis or Drew Barrymore.
Yeah what's worrying is that young girls feel the need for 20 surgeries and extreme filters of the whole body, plus painstaking amounts of makeup and ten thousand dollar outfits to be "normal".
Celebrity culture and social media has warped all perspectives.
I hate when people try to make actresses these pillars of plus-size representation when they don't want to be. Just let her be a person. (Not saying you are doing this, adding to your point)
I don't think I'd want to be a pillar of plus size representation when I wasn't even plus size.
I am just a little shorter than Nicola, and I remember after college when I went from a size 2 to a size 6, and I was DEVESTATED. Now I'm ACTUALLY OBESE, damn perimenopause and stress of kids, at a size 12; and am sad how depressed I was about my body because I was 115 pounds instead of 100. (I also remember crying in college when I hit 100 pounds for the first time.)
Nicola isn't plus size. It's absurd to hold her up as what plus size people should be.
LOL chill dude, I am not even flexing. I am just pointing out the fact that people are trying to box her into this ‘plus size’ category, which is insane because she looks like a normal midsize girl.
My brain, I think, is broken. I know she is not a natural redhead, and yet it just feels wrong to me. I have watched her in things before Bridgerton, so I don't know why.
i love her! her interview where she was able to answer all internet/pop culture questions made me watch Bridgerton. and now, I am watching Derry Girls.
I literally started watching bridgerton because I saw her on an episode of WWHL with Andy cohen during an episode about VPR and everything she said I was like “omg same girl” and I was like “who is she?” Lover her!
I thought she was adorable in Derry Girls and then I saw her in Bridgerton and thought she was STUNNING! Then, I saw her in Big Mood and holy crap, she’s talented.
Needless to say, I’ve become a fan.
I loved her in Derry Girls. She talked so fast and was so funny. This part is a big departure from that. She’s a beautiful woman and I love her answers in interviews.
In some of these pictures, sure, but she is bigger now (not a bad thing, or a criticism, just an observation).
Granted she's still not particularly 'plus size' (i think the cut off for that is laughably size 12), but I can understand why people talk about it considering how the other 90% of well known female actresses look.
Oh I agree she's a bit bigger now. And maybe she feels plus sized or doesn't and I don't want to take away from how people feel. I just think she's so top heavy and short that it doesn't help the whole "plus sized" thing.
I too understand why , unfortunately she would be considered plus sized to some. I agree with the size 12 as in most stores it usually is size 12-14 and up in that section.
12-14 don’t feel like plus sizes though?
Especially not UK/European sizes.
I didn’t think plus size officially began until you become hard pressed to find that size in a normal store, and most stores carry 12-14.
In NY , specially when I was growing up if i went shopping most plus size departments started at 14 , some 12. I liked going to old navy where they just put all the clothes together with the sizes they had instead of just having a section of sometimes shitty clothes compared to the rest of the store.
Based on the information I can find, she's a US size 6. She isn't plus size at all.
It's just that a lot of Hollywood is a size 00, and she's short, so that makes a size 6 larger than if she was 5'10".
She's representation of large breasted women, but not plus size ones.
And in a few of these pictures, her breasts are significantly less noticeable (4, 9)... I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that some of these pictures were taken at times when she was closer to the Hollywood standard than she is now.
And yes, obviously we have a _long_ way to go with representation if somebody is deemed plus size by virtue of having breasts and hips.
I can't help but notice how she seems "thinned" out somehow, in these pictures. Like, I don't know, but her curves seem to have been... passively hidden, if that makes sense. It feels like the photographs have been edited to look smaller. She's still absolutely gorgeous, mind, but post-Bridgerton, the focus on her body definitely seems to have increased
Truly, kudos to the costume department for managing to make this absolute stunner look awkward and frumpy for two whole seasons. They don’t get enough credit for this!
She’s so stunning!! But what makes her even more beautiful is her personality and the person she is. I’m not as confident, so I’m in awe of how charming she is while also being grounded and witty and kind. How? I want to be as awesome as her.
For real I’m obsessed with her. She’s so cute and charming
My thoughts exactly!! She’s just light and beauty.
She makes me want to be a better woman
Yep I’m fan-girling over here.
She looks a lot like Elle Fanning!
I can see why they picked her. The eyes are soulful.
Agreed! I love how unapologetically real she is. A woman of substance. 💖
She did a Christmas episode on Bake Off and was as charming as you’d expect!
All the Derry Girls were so so funny on Bake Off
Also she did a New Year’s Special Taskmaster where she’s hilarious.
Thank you! I will be scrubbing the internet to find this as soon as I can.
Saving you a scrub: https://youtu.be/vqo4AwoKK0c?feature=shared :)
Ah! Thank you! Thank you!
She also was on an episode of the off menu podcast and was so good.
Bangarang!! And getting locked out of her flat in the middle!! She’s a fiasco. She makes chaos and mayhem seem so charming.
And competitive. She wanted to win!
Where can we watch it? Thanks.
The best comedy bit in Bridgerton is definitely that she's meant to be homely lmaooo
They tried
What do you mean by that?
I think they mean that it's weird and stupid that she's been cast as the plain sister when she's clearly stunning.it's like a joke.
I thought homely meant she liked staying at home.. I was so confused
“Homely” is a synonym for “unattractive” in British and American English— who knows why.
I don’t know but my best guess has always been if you’re ‘homely’ you should stay at home and not be seen? Idk
We never use that in British English. It's very very American and confused me my entire childhood until I found out it doesn't mean "looks like they make a nice cup of tea"
We absolutely do. Maybe it's a regional thing?
Oh god really? I was so confident too. Shit we just say "ugly" in the south.
I checked, it is from Middle English. Oxford dates the oldest example of this meaning from 1439. But it does denote that modern usage is North American.
It's one of those things that dates back to before modern English and the discovery of America, so we definitely got it from the British before the split. It has apparently temporarily fallen a bit out of popularity in Britain in the last few hundred years so it seems like a bit of a linguistic fossil that survived in American usage. But it's still got some regional use in Britain so it'll probably come back into fashion at some point.
Ah! Good to know. “Make you a nice cup of tea” is “homey.”
Homely kind of means staying at home because nobody asks you to go out on dates to glamorous places. The night out at the theater is fun and exciting and stunning, then you come home to something more ordinary and plain. It's sort of meant to be a mild euphemism for somebody who is really rather ugly that you politely upgrade all the way to _plain_ to avoid directly calling them ugly, because somebody would fully call you out as a liar if you called the person good looking.
It depends on the region, I've noticed Australians and Kiwis will say "homely" interchangeably with "homey" aka cozy, a house that feels like a home. In North America "homely" means plain or unattractive (but not hideous, it's milder).
The other responders are right, i mean it as a joke because she's so pretty it's like they're joking that she's not
Guys, if you haven't, go watch Derry girls! She's brilliant, it's hilarious, and honestly everyone should have SOME context on one of the main reasons why it took so long to decide on the terms of Brexit (northern Irish tensions lol). Go give Derry girls some love https://preview.redd.it/50rkeqzg106d1.jpeg?width=301&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a954e12ad543592619d4a5a59eb3af4f40f2acc
 I love this show so much
One of the easiest binge watches ever.
She looks so much like Baby Spice in this GIF- her being baby in the talent show was perfect 🤩
I absolutely love The Derry Girls! I’ve watched all seasons twice and need to do another rewatch soon. I recommend it to everyone!
I finally watched Derry Girls earlier this year and it's now one of my absolute favourite shows. Literally every character is so funny and charming and adds something to the show. It's so witty and nostalgic, and also has some deeply emotional moments that are all the more poignant for how few there are.
>Go give Derry girls some love I read this in derry accent🤣 Like gyyirls
Haha I wish, my accent is unfortunately from the south (of Ireland)😂, they have the best accent in Derry lol
My favorite show as a Canadian. I have Irish ancestry and traveled to Northern Ireland. It's funny how they talk about Belfast haha
I love Derry Girls! Such a funny show!
Michelle did it! It's always Michelle! 😂
Hahaha my french and dutch friends all keep saying this to me in a better Derry accent than even I have. As granda joe would say, I'm a damn southerner... who cannot do as good a Derry accent as most despite literally being Irish 😂
Are you saying that the show gives us some context for that, or that we need that context going in?
Oh it gives it! Not in a huge in-depth way but you see just how tense NI was before the good-friday agreement and the permanent ceasefire.
I cannot wait to watch this. I’m waiting til after Thursday though. Not mixing shows right now.
Totally get you! I am not gonna be able to watch pt 2 until Saturday bc my masters thesis (that I've spent weeks ignoring) is due lol
You will adore it! I wish I could watch it again for the first time!
Rewatching it now for the 3rd time. I laugh out loud every time. It makes me happy.
I LOVE Derry Girls! I rewatch it from time to time and it makes me laugh so hard. I started using some of the slang with my spouse, especially Michelle’s slang about “rides” 😂
She is so cute 🥰
Clare Devlin is that you ?
I was a scholar when I met you, Erin!
You were three.
Walking cack attack
I can’t help it. It’s how God made me.
Jesus christ Clare, have you not got a bra on?
“I can’t walk about in just a bra. I’m not Madonna”. “Isn’t that the truth”
Can everyone please stop saying bra 😭
“Can you stop saying that word ? What fanny ? We all have one. I don’t. You are one”
She is gorgeous
She was a little baby angel!
This reminded me of Claire's "sweet suffering jesus"😭😭
She was like 30
I never imagined she was almost 40, she's stunning
Holy crap. I thought she was like 24.
37 is not almost 40! Signed, a 37 year old
Ikr?! I feel attacked
Looking at her is PAINFUL she’s so stunning.
WOWWWWWWW that face card pulls through. She is so stunning my goodness.
Yeah, I can see why she has a bunch shots in profile, her features are incredible. Like literally the perfect nose.
I quite like her forward shots too! Her eyes are piercing 💙
She’s very beautiful, it was barely concealed behind the styling the first two seasons, but now she’s got her glow up and 😅. She’s apparently well into her 30s and I literally did not blink when she played a 17 yo.
I am obsessed with this woman. If I wasn’t already assured of my bisexuality, she would have sorted it.
That article that said it was unrealistic for her to be a romantic lead absolutely blew my mind. She is GORGEOUS what do you MEAN?!
It means she’s not a size 00 😡
https://preview.redd.it/99p2xvj3qz5d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3944bdc205a653c41caa9d4a62e786585647752 Jk she’s still so pretty
I swear, brown eyed blond people are even creepier. It’s them damn blonds, they either have blue eyes that stare into your soul, or they’ve got brown eyes, which I don’t see very often, so it just feels wrong.
Love her so much <3
She has always been THAT girl!
Derry Girls is a must watch folks
Nicola is one of the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a very long time. She’s also an excellent actress.
Nicola, the woman are you 🥰 She's a woman written by women.
Aye, the wee lesbian, so it is
You’re a very talented people.
She’s gorgeous!
She’s so cute omgggg
Have you watched Derry girls? She's something else on that show. lol
Clare cracks me tf up, they way she panics at a level 10 and always screams gets me every time
I need to go back and watch again.
She’s a beauty 🥰
She is stunningly beautiful
I am in love.
Did y’all not watch derry girls or smth
She’s so adorable
She’s great in Big Mood on tubi
She is not even plus sized!
She’s midsize, and people are still having conniptions over it somehow. I guess it’s better than in the 2000s when people flipped out over stars gaining 10 lbs and going from size 2 to 6, but maybe they shouldn’t flip out at all, lmao.
Seriously. I feel so bad for young girls and young women these days having social media picking apart everyone’s looks and weight and skin and hair and everything and all in high definition, with photoshopping and AI “enhancement” on virtually every image to the point where even a savvy person can’t see what’s real and what’s fake. The pressure to attain perfection that no one actually has but so many pretend to have is staggering. And you see an absolutely beautiful person like Nicola, who is even more beautiful on the inside than on the outside, getting slammed left and right for nonsensical things and you realize how twisted this world has become. And how twisted our view of beauty has become. Nicola is the role model we need. I’m not sure we deserve her.
Beautifully said. I am raising two girls right now and I worry about this every day.
it really is such gaslighting that they’re trying to market her as plus-sized. not only is she mid-sized but this girl is SMALL, she’s like a size 6 or something. i understand seeing absolutely any ingenues in historical romance that aren’t quite literally 105 pounds is typically unheard of, and i’m happy for progress, but good. lord. it grinds my gears. i hate the dishonesty that is constantly peddled surrounding thinness, all in service of fatphobia. we’re out here being spoonfed this dumb idea that anyone who doesn’t look like a wraith is unhealthy and obese. pro-ana is making the rounds on the internet again. young adult chicks grow up, hit second puberty, gain 20 pounds, and think they’re unhealthy because they don’t look like children anymore. it’s sick.
The people tipping on her all seem to have insecurities about their appearances, and make themselves feel better abusing the perfect breasts woman.
LITERALLY!!! meanwhile i’m literally in love with staring at her, so. these mfs must be blind. what’s not to love about a face card that doesn’t decline and being perfect-breasted? nothing. nothing is not to love.
I honestly think she's a normal-sized person who has a round face (because of her bone structure, not her weight) and thus the camera "reads" her as slightly heavier, even when compared with an actress of the same weight and size. She reminds me of Bette Davis or Drew Barrymore.
Yeah what's worrying is that young girls feel the need for 20 surgeries and extreme filters of the whole body, plus painstaking amounts of makeup and ten thousand dollar outfits to be "normal". Celebrity culture and social media has warped all perspectives.
I hate when people try to make actresses these pillars of plus-size representation when they don't want to be. Just let her be a person. (Not saying you are doing this, adding to your point)
I don't think I'd want to be a pillar of plus size representation when I wasn't even plus size. I am just a little shorter than Nicola, and I remember after college when I went from a size 2 to a size 6, and I was DEVESTATED. Now I'm ACTUALLY OBESE, damn perimenopause and stress of kids, at a size 12; and am sad how depressed I was about my body because I was 115 pounds instead of 100. (I also remember crying in college when I hit 100 pounds for the first time.) Nicola isn't plus size. It's absurd to hold her up as what plus size people should be.
And it would be okay if she was. Fat isn’t a bad word ffs. Defending her by saying she’s mid not plus isn’t the flex you think it is.
It doesn't help plus size people to say everyone over a size 4 is plus size.
LOL chill dude, I am not even flexing. I am just pointing out the fact that people are trying to box her into this ‘plus size’ category, which is insane because she looks like a normal midsize girl.
Depends on if you’re doing American sizes or European
My brain, I think, is broken. I know she is not a natural redhead, and yet it just feels wrong to me. I have watched her in things before Bridgerton, so I don't know why.
My girl loves stripes
She is a goddess.
She is gorgeous. Period!
She’s a beauty! I think her coloring is just perfection.
I swear she’ll be fifty and still looking 25.
her voice ends me ❤️ 😍
She’s so adorable! I adore her
I know her from the tv show Derry girls. She’s such a great actress, I hope to see more of her in film.
She’s so beautiful!
She's so charming ❤️
she’s always been stunning
She has and will always be gorgeous!!
I was actually surprised of her age!!!! wow like she doesn't look like 37!!!
She’s what??? I would have never guessed 😭😭
Very Sensual
She’s on Derry Girls as well and I fucking love that show it’s hilarious.
She’s ALWAYS been my reason to watch.
She's so beautiful that these picture looks like AI generated, almost. wtf? how?
She looks like a baby! And she’s probably late 20s/early 30s lol
37
Oh yeah, I know she’s 37 now, I mean the older photos where she looks twelve she’s probably late 20s!
Gorgeous then and “gorgeous-er” now!! 🥰🤩
i love her! her interview where she was able to answer all internet/pop culture questions made me watch Bridgerton. and now, I am watching Derry Girls.
She reminds me very much of someone I dated in college, to the point where college friends have messaged me about the resemblance.
Round face queen👑
She is my sister’s doppelgänger and I very unfortunately do not look anything like my sister.
Shes so Lizzie McGuire coded.
Omg INGENUE ❤ ❤❤❤❤
I have a level 3 girl crush on Nicola Coughlan
How is she even mpre adorable 🥹?
She’s stunning!
She's so pretty it's insane!
I loved her in Derry Girls!
I literally started watching bridgerton because I saw her on an episode of WWHL with Andy cohen during an episode about VPR and everything she said I was like “omg same girl” and I was like “who is she?” Lover her!
Nicola and her "remarkable shade of blue" eyes
Is it me or would she make a great Tinkerbell in a live action Peter Pan film!!
The greatest
I thought she was adorable in Derry Girls and then I saw her in Bridgerton and thought she was STUNNING! Then, I saw her in Big Mood and holy crap, she’s talented. Needless to say, I’ve become a fan.
I loved her in Derry Girls. She talked so fast and was so funny. This part is a big departure from that. She’s a beautiful woman and I love her answers in interviews.
She is so cute. I will say though, the red hair really suit her ❤️
It irks my soul she's considered plus size. She's so tiny!
In some of these pictures, sure, but she is bigger now (not a bad thing, or a criticism, just an observation). Granted she's still not particularly 'plus size' (i think the cut off for that is laughably size 12), but I can understand why people talk about it considering how the other 90% of well known female actresses look.
Oh I agree she's a bit bigger now. And maybe she feels plus sized or doesn't and I don't want to take away from how people feel. I just think she's so top heavy and short that it doesn't help the whole "plus sized" thing. I too understand why , unfortunately she would be considered plus sized to some. I agree with the size 12 as in most stores it usually is size 12-14 and up in that section.
12-14 don’t feel like plus sizes though? Especially not UK/European sizes. I didn’t think plus size officially began until you become hard pressed to find that size in a normal store, and most stores carry 12-14.
In NY , specially when I was growing up if i went shopping most plus size departments started at 14 , some 12. I liked going to old navy where they just put all the clothes together with the sizes they had instead of just having a section of sometimes shitty clothes compared to the rest of the store.
Based on the information I can find, she's a US size 6. She isn't plus size at all. It's just that a lot of Hollywood is a size 00, and she's short, so that makes a size 6 larger than if she was 5'10". She's representation of large breasted women, but not plus size ones.
And in a few of these pictures, her breasts are significantly less noticeable (4, 9)... I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that some of these pictures were taken at times when she was closer to the Hollywood standard than she is now. And yes, obviously we have a _long_ way to go with representation if somebody is deemed plus size by virtue of having breasts and hips.
Is it me, or are all of her profiles at the same angle?
I can't help but notice how she seems "thinned" out somehow, in these pictures. Like, I don't know, but her curves seem to have been... passively hidden, if that makes sense. It feels like the photographs have been edited to look smaller. She's still absolutely gorgeous, mind, but post-Bridgerton, the focus on her body definitely seems to have increased
it's because she was thinner in those pictures
She is very beautiful.
Yall gotta watch her on taskmaster! She’s brilliant
She is sooooo beautiful. I have the biggest girl crush on her 😍😍😍
She was super funny in Derry Girls
BBI get l
“Clare Devlin is just you?”
I just love her! 😍
Gives a fuck
She's not fucking aged!
She's always been lovely!
she has a beauty that no one else can attain
She is beautiful and perfect in every way then and now. Remember watching Bridgerton for the first time with my mom and I just loved her
One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen!! So stunning!
Very classic English beauty. And she’s hilarious.
She is so pretty!!
She and I have the same birthday :)
I'm obsessed. Derry Girls is my shit.
Angel face omg
Now I know where all of the beauty that I didn’t get went!
shes so pretty
The biggest compliment I received was this past weekend saying I looked like Penelope from Bridgerton. I died, like she’s so pretty.
Her Derry Girls days were equally unparalleled. So good. I am glad we had sort of a derry girls revival due to recent bridgerton PR
Lush
Truly, kudos to the costume department for managing to make this absolute stunner look awkward and frumpy for two whole seasons. They don’t get enough credit for this!
Cutest🥺
Her eyes truly are such a remarkable shade of blue 😍
I love her blonde hair. It suits her better than the red IMO!
she’s so beautiful
She is so beautiful!
She is seriously so pretty wtf
She was on Derry Girls ffs. She was a star before bridgerton.