A.W.A.D. - Words Related to Beards

Over the years we have featured weeks of words about words, we have had words about birds, and now it's time for, well, words about beards.

Are bearded people irritating? While some find a beard on a man attractive, it repels others. Like barbed wire, literally speaking. The words barb, barber, rebarbative, and beard are derived from the same root: Latin barba (beard). And though many bards have beards, there is no connection between the two words.

Though most men have only a fleeting interest in pogonotrophy (growing of abeard, from Greek pogon, beard + -trophy, nourishment or growth), growing it now, shaving it when the fancy strikes, for some, beards are a serious business. There's even a biannual championship event for the bearded: http://worldbeardchampionships.com/

This week we'll see five words having to do with facial hair. They are pure beard words as the week starts out, and like beards growing slender at the bottom, as the week ends the connection becomes slender too.

sideburns
(SYDE-burnz) plural noun

Hair grown on the sides of a man's face, when worn with an unbearded chin.

[After Ambrose Everett Burnside (1824-1881), who served as a general in theUnion Army in the American Civil War, and who earned more recognition for his side whiskers than for his military career. Eventually the term burnsides morphed into sideburns as such a facial pattern was on the sides of a face.]

dundrearies
(dun-DREER-eez) noun
Long flowing sideburns.

[After the bushy sideburns worn by actor Edward A. Sothern who played the part of Lord Dundreary in the play Our American Cousin (1858), written by Tom Taylor (1817-1880). This was the play being performed at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC during which Abraham Lincoln was shot.]

Vandyke or Van Dyke or vandyke
(van dyk) noun
A short, pointed beard.

[After painter Anthony Van Dyck or Vandyke (1599-1641) who painted portraits of people having these v-shaped beards.]

bluebeard
(BLOO-beerd) noun
A man who marries and kills one wife after another.

[After Bluebeard, the nickname of the main character Raoul in a fairy tale by Charles Perrault (1628-1703). In the story, Bluebeard's wife finds the bodies of his previous wives in a room she was forbidden to enter. Yes, he did have a blue beard.]

Jericho
(JER-i-ko) noun

A place out of the way; an unspecified place; a place of concealment. Often used in the phrase "go to Jericho".

[After Jericho, an ancient city of Palestine, northwest of the Dead Sea, where David had his servants wait until their beards had grown. As in Samuel, a book of the Bible, "And the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown."]