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.

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

More example sentences

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."

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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