Why Do We Call Blonde Kids ‘Towheads’? скачать в хорошем качестве

Why Do We Call Blonde Kids ‘Towheads’?

#bigquestions #blonde #blondies While you don’t hear people describing their blonde toddlers as “towheads” very often these days, spend some time reading 19th-century literature and you’ll probably come across the expression eventually. As Grammarphobia reports, the tow in towhead isn’t akin to the tow in tow truck or undertow. The latter comes from the Old English word togian, which means “to draw or pull by force, to drag,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The former tow, which dates at least as far back as the 14th century, means “the fiber of flax, hemp, or jute prepared for spinning by some process of scutching.” Its origin isn’t quite as clear, but it may have derived from the Old Norse noun tó, meaning “uncleansed wool or flax.” Since those fibers, used for textiles, were light tan or golden, people co-opted them to describe light tan or golden hair. This also explains why blonde hair is sometimes described as “flaxen.” Towhead first appeared in writing around 1830 and persisted throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in reference to children. In his 1850 novel Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family, for example, Sylvester Judd mentions the “bronze-faced and tow-headed Wild Olive boys.” And in an article from a September 1884 issue of Harper’s Magazine, “tow-headed children” are “rolling about in the orchards.”