Word of the Day

: August 17, 2021

tousle

verb TOW-zul

What 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.

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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."