Word of the Day
: August 17, 2021tousle
playWhat It Means
Tousle means "to make untidy (especially someone's hair)."
// Vic stood in front of the mirror and tousled his hair, trying to get a cool, disheveled look.
tousle in Context
"Mr. Sliwa grinned as he tousled a Shih Tzu named Sonnyboy, calling him a 'puffball.'" — Nate Schweber, The New York Times, 22 June 2021
Did You Know?
Tousle is a word that has been through what linguists call a "functional shift." That's a fancy way of saying it was originally one part of speech, then gradually came to have an additional function. Tousle started out as a verb back in the 15th century and, after a few centuries of grooming, debuted as a noun referring to a tangled mass (also often used to talk about messy hair), as in “he had a thick tousle of hair.” Etymologists connect tousle to an Old High German word meaning "to pull to pieces."
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Quiz
Fill in the blanks to complete an adjective meaning "puffed out" that is sometimes used to describe a hairdo: b o _ _ _ _ _ t.
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