towhead
nounEtymology From tow + -head.
1
A blond person whose very pale, almost white hair resembles tow; the hair of such a person.
- You've got a swell chance to make this [baseball] team, you have, not! Third base is my job, Freshie. Why, you tow-head, you couldn't play marbles.1911 March, Zane Grey, “Out on the Field”, in The Young Pitcher, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC, page 64:
- Then he noticed that the scar ran back into her hair, and Lower Appalachian towhead is the nearest thing in nature you will get to platinum blond, barring albinos.1959, Robert Penn Warren, The Cave, The University Press of Kentucky, published 2006, page 54:
2 more examples
- 2010, Joseph A. West, Richard Compton (byline), Death of a Hangman, New American Library (Signet), page 103, “Hell, I never did cotton to an uppity whore anyhow," the towhead said.
- 2012, Ann M. Paulson, Stepping Stones for the Heart, Hay House (Balboa Press), page 88, The courtyard was lit with bright sunlight and Asenath and the two towheads were there amusing themselves.
2
An alluvial deposit in a river, such as a sandbar, or a small island formed from silt, often permanent enough to have vegetation.
- Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to.1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:
- Derived terms
- towheaded